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Single-Port Surgery Changes the Landscape in Prostate Cancer Treatment

The benefits of single-port surgery are around minimizing the invasiveness of the operation. It is also important to understand that we can do most single-port procedures on the prostate through an extraperitoneal approach, which means conducting the operation entirely in the pelvis, where the prostate lies anatomically in the body. This is different than traditional robotic surgery, which is performed through a transperitoneal approach through the abdomen. When you make incisions through the abdomen, it can impact a lot of the other anatomic structures, organs, the intestines, other big blood vessels. Whereas if you do a single-port procedure, you can confine the operation entirely to the pelvis…

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 From Radical to Robotic: Evolution of Surgical Procedures

A detailed history of the machine that transformed prostatectomies into a simpler surgery.

Articles of Interest

Anatomic radical prostatectomy transforms prostate surgery

The history of the development of anatomical radical prostatectomy is quite fascinating. It's important to know that the first radical prostatectomies were performed via a perineal approach. Hugh Hampton Young, MD, was a pioneer of that approach and performed the first perineal prostatectomy in 1905.

Experience Matters in Prostate Surgery

Five years after a prostatectomy, about 18 percent of men under the care of an inexperienced surgeon, those with no more than 10 prior operations, were more likely to see signs that cancer had returned, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center researchers in New York said. Prostate cancer affects more than 218,000 American men each year, according to the Prostate Cancer Foundation Web site.

History of the Prostatectomy

Although fading rapidly in popularity, RRP can still at times be presented to patients as an equivalent or even superior alternative to robotic prostatectomy.

How Robotics Are Bringing Back Perineal Radical Prostatectomy

Concerned about the complications and side effects oftraditional invasive prostate cancer surgery, radiation or cryotherapy? We have some good news, and a better prostate cancer treatment solution:

How to Find an Expert Surgeon

If you have ever talked to a group of men who have had surgery for prostate cancer, you may have heard some stories that just break your heart. We have. Those stories are particularly upsetting for us here at the Prostate Cancer Foundation, because we work with some of the best surgeons in the world. We know that the complications from surgery to remove the prostate – a radical prostatectomy, performed either in open surgery or in laparoscopic form using a robot – ought to be minimal. But often, they are devastating.

Life after a Radical Prostatectomy: A Real-Life Story

So if we remove the prostate, what is starting stopping urinary flow? The answer is nothing! If there is urine in the bladder (and there always is), it will flow right through to the outside. Men without a prostate need another way to gain control over urination. Women don't have a prostate. What do they use? Kegel muscles!

New surgery for benign prostate hyperplasia provides long-lasting benefits

One of the newer surgical options, called aquablation, trims excess prostate tissues with highly pressurized jets of saline. Doctors perform aquablation in the operating room while looking at the prostate gland on an ultrasound machine. Patients are put under general anesthesia, so they don't feel any pain during the procedure.

Prostate cancer surgery breakthrough offers hope for erectile function

Neurosafe procedure allows doctors to remove prostate while preserving as much nerve tissue around it as possible.

Regrets After Prostate Surgery

Part of the problem may be that doctors who perform robotic prostatectomies commonly cite potency rates as high as 95 percent and above among their patients, giving patients an unrealistic view of life after surgery. But the data are highly misleading.

Results Unproven, Robotic Surgery Wins Converts

The robot’s ability to reach into small spaces comes with tradeoffs. Ordinarily, doctors can feel how forcefully they are grabbing tissue, how well they are cutting, how their stitches are holding. With the robot, that is lost. And the robot is slow; it typically takes three and a half hours for a prostate operation, according to Intuitive, twice as long as traditional surgery.

Sexual dysfunction after prostate surgery is more common than previously reported, says Hutchinson Center study

A year and a half after surgery, impotence rates ranged from 66 percent among those who underwent non-nerve sparing prostatectomy to 56 percent among those in whom a bilateral (two-sided) nerve-sparing procedure was attempted.

Study: Surgery for Early Prostate Cancer Doesn’t Save Lives

Men who have early-stage prostate cancer will live just as long if they forgo surgery, which carries risks of impotence and incontinence, and simply do nothing but watch their cancer, according to the results of the largest clinical trial on the issue to date.

The Side Effects? Well, There Is One...

The reality for many of the 240,000 men in the United States in whom prostate cancer is diagnosed each year is not all that rosy, at least when it comes to their intimate lives. After surgery and radiation treatments, many men quickly discover that sex will never be normal again. Sensations change. Many men can no longer achieve erections without pumps or pills. For some, the ability to have sex goes away entirely.