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Definition |
During the past two decades, there has been a trend towards earlier diagnosis of PCa as a result of greater public and professional awareness, leading to the adoption of both formal and informal screening strategies. The effect of this has been to identify men at an earlier stage with smaller tumours that occupy only 5-10% of the prostate volume, with a greater propensity for unifocal or unilateral disease. Most focal therapies to date have been achieved with ablative technologies: cryotherapy, HIFU or photodynamic therapy, electroporation, focal radiotherapy by brachytherapy, or CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System technology (Accuray Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA). The main purpose of focal therapy is to limit treatment toxicity in patients that could benefit from local disease control.
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