The prostate tumor is the one with the highest incidence in the Spanish male population with more than 30,000 new patients per year. The main problem is that once treated, it is common for this cancer to reappear. Specifically, approximately 10 to 40 percent of patients suffer a recurrence (recurrence), and treatments do not always work. In this context, a group of urologists from the Clínica Universidad de Navarra has ventured to perform robotic surgery for the first time in Spain to rescue a relapse of prostate cancer.
As Bernardino Miñana, co-director of Urology at the University of Navarra Clinic in Madrid explained, “The patient had his prostate removed (radical prostatectomy) and, after the recurrence of the tumor the following year, he was treated with radiotherapy. The high-risk cancer reappeared twelve years later in a previously treated complex area, so there was no conventional option available to cure it. ”
Being able to visualize the tumor so early was possible thanks to a novel diagnostic technique newly incorporated in the Clinic, the realization of a PET with Gallium PSMA, which adheres to prostate cancer cells and allows you to see, for the first time, where it is located exactly the new tumor inside the pelvis. As Miñana insisted “until now, thanks to the PSA marker, we knew that there was a tumor relapse, but we did not know exactly where it was located, so there were only two alternatives: observation of the evolution of cancer and radiation in the area. In the case of the patient, whose tumor was aggressive, he had already received the radiation dose. ”
In this way, the team has managed to remove the lesion through robotic surgery, a minimally invasive intervention performed with the Da Vinci robot, which improves the surgeon's vision and allows greater precision, favoring subsequent recovery, since the skin incisions They do not exceed the centimeter.
Currently, the patient is well, with an undetectable PSA and has no symptoms. That is why urologists have reported that after the success of the operation, it can be said that it was possible to remove a tumor that was life-threatening when no other option was available with conventional treatments.