Prostate news report, April 2007
| LOCAL CANCER
SUFFERERS GET ‘THE FRENCH TREATMENT’
Prostate cancer patients who come under the care of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust will be benefiting from specialist keyhole surgery from May 3rd, thanks to a training grant from a national charity.. By: Andrea Kon (Prostate UK) |
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Prostate UK (when it was known as Prostate Research Campaign UK) helped fund Pembury resident Mr. John Donohue’s training, in removing cancerous prostates by keyhole surgery, by giving him a £9,300 grant. Some 32,000 men in Britain are diagnosed with Prostate Cancer every year. Around 10,000 die. Prostate UK is the only charity to fund research into all prostate diseases, including cancer, benign prostate disease and prostatitis, a painful inflammation of the prostate that can affect men of any age. It also runs seminars for health care professionals involved in the treatment of all prostate patients and offers information to patients on managing their diseases.
Mr. Donohue’s grant enabled him to undertake six months highly specialised training with world experts in France, to operate on men with prostate cancer, but without the need for major abdominal surgery. The delicate laparoscopic technique, which is performed with the assistance of a large screen, not only removes the need for a large abdominal incision, it also potentially reduces the after effects of major surgery, such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction.. It also shortens a patient’s hospital stay considerably, from around six to seven days with open surgery, to just two or three.
Mr. Donohue explains: “This innovative procedure was first reported by an American team 10 years ago, who concluded that the technique had no advantage over traditional open surgery. However, 2 years later, French doctors at the Montsouris Institute in Paris demonstrated that they had successfully operated on 65 patients this way. As a result of the French experience, one of the Parisienne team, Dr Guillonneau, was head-hunted to set up the service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York which has an international reputation of excellence for cancer care.
After finishing his training in the UK, Mr Donohue spent two years on a fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering and worked with Dr Guillonneau. “I was interested in learning this technique but, naturally, preference was given to American trainees and therefore Dr Guillonneau arranged for me to spend 6 months with Professor Georges Fournier, head of the Urology Department at the Brest University Hospital in the Bretagne region in north-west France.
“The investment in time was important as the technique cannot be learned quickly. Training is difficult to obtain in the UK at present, as many surgeons performing this operation, are on the learning curve themselves. By training in France, with world leading experts who operate four times a week, I benefited from the equivalent of two years experience in laparoscopic surgery in the UK in just six months. As my French language skills are very basic, the hospital couldn’t pay me a salary and therefore it would have been difficult for me to undertake this specialist training without Prostate UK’s generous support.”