Treatment Options

Surgery

Laparoscopic prostatectomy

If your cancer is localized to the prostate, and you are in reasonably good health and younger than 75 years old, your doctors may recommend that you have surgery to treat your prostate cancer. The most common procedure is called a radical prostatectomy. You may want to ask your surgeon about doing this procedure laparoscopically.

If you opt for a laparoscopic prostatectomy, your surgeon will remove your prostate gland through several very small incisions, using special instruments and cameras. Two different types of robots may be used to assist during surgery.

The major advantages of laparoscopic surgery are that you will probably heal faster and experience less pain than with other types of prostate surgery. The advantages are faster recovery, less pain, faster return to normal activity, decreased blood loss, decreased risk of infection and earlier catheter removal.

Like other types of prostatectomy, the major disadvantages of this surgery are impotence and incontinence. However, nerve-sparing surgery can also be done laparoscopically, and that procedure increases your chances of maintaining sexual potency after surgery.

Laparoscopic prostatectomy is a relatively new procedure, and not all surgeons are trained to do it. Prostate surgery for SCCA patients is performed at the University of Washington Medical Center, by surgeons who are leaders in prostate cancer surgery in the Pacific Northwest and who have performed more laparoscopic prostatectomies than any other cancer center in the region.

Dr. Paul Lange says he believes that within several years laparoscopic prostatectomy will be the preferred surgical technique at major prostate centers across the country.

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November 2004


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