HIFU Benefits Series: Outpatient Procedure

HIFU for prostate cancer is an outpatient procedure.

Medical treatments are never fun, but when facing a cancer diagnosis, most men decide to pursue some kind of treatment, which means they will have to face all the things that come along with it including a hospital stay and weeks of recovery. Or maybe not.

One of the benefits of HIFU for prostate cancer is that the treatment to remove the prostate non-invasively with sound waves is an outpatient procedure that lets men return to their lifestyle within a few days.

More specifically this means that when a man schedules his HIFU procedure, most likely he will arrive at the treatment center in the morning, have his procedure and then after an hour or so in recovery, he will be sent home to recover comfortably.

There is no hospital stay.

The length of the procedure will depend on the size of a man’s prostate and the amount of tissue to be treated, so it can range from 1-4 hours.

Compare this experience with that of a radical prostatectomy. According to Web MD, a prostatectomy usually requires general anesthesia and a hospital stay of 2 to 4 days. Some facilities may even require that men stay in the hospital up to a week after a radical prostatectomy.

Men who choose HIFU will still need to recover and let their body heal, but since there is no cutting or incision, the recovery process overall is usually quicker than traditional treatment therapies.

Other treatments such as different types of external beam radiation therapy, may require men to make multiple visits to a treatment center to receive radiation every day over several weeks.

Since HIFU is a one-time, outpatient procedure, men don’t see a significant disruption to their quality of life or their normal routine. They are able to treat their prostate cancer without spending time away from their family, work or home while they recover in a hospital.

To learn about other benefits of HIFU, click here.

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