Not All Doctors Who Offer HIFU Are the Same

Earlier this month, we published a blog article about the types of questions a man should consider asking his doctor before scheduling a HIFU procedure. The reason this is so important is because not all physicians who offer HIFU to men with localized prostate cancer have the same level of experience, training with the HIFU procedure.

In fact, since HIFU was approved by the FDA in 2015 for prostate tissue ablation and subsequently a Medicare code was issued to cover portion of the cost of the treatment, many urologists with little to no experience at all are starting to explore offering the treatment.

Just because someone is new to HIFU doesn’t mean they can’t deliver a quality treatment, but as a patient, we recommend that before you schedule your HIFU treatment, you have a solid understanding of the steps a doctor went through to train for delivering HIFU.

HIFU for prostate cancer has been available outside the U.S. for over 15 years and many U.S. board-certified urologists began training and offering HIFU in hospitals in other countries long before it was approved by the FDA for use in the U.S. This means that many urologists were already trained with multiple years of experience before HIFU was available in the U.S.

Finding HIFU Doctors with experience is important and here is why.At HIFU Prostate Services, the overwhelming majority of the physicians we work with to offer HIFU to patients trained over 5 years ago and some have been treating patients for over 10 years. In fact, of all the HIFU cases completed in the U.S. since October 2015, over half of them have been done within the HIFU Prostate Services network with HPS physicians and treatment centers. 

We pride ourselves on only working with the most experience physicians and team to make sure that our partners deliver the best possible HIFU treatment and follow up.

Never hesitate to ask a physician about their unique experience with HIFU and how many patients they have worked with since first training to offer the treatment. Want to see other questions to ask your doctor? Click here.

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