Introduction: Focal therapy has increasingly become an accepted treatment option for patients with localised prostate cancer. Most follow-up protocols use a mixture of protocol biopsies or "for cause" biopsies triggered by a rising PSA. In this paper, we discuss the histological outcomes from these biopsies and their use in guiding subsequent management and trial development.
Methods: We conducted a literature search and reviewed the post-treatment biopsy results from studies on focal HIFU and focal cryotherapy. We subsequently reviewed the results of three recently published consensus statements released discussing many of the issues concerning focal therapy.
Results: Research suggests that 1 in 5 of all post-treatment biopsies after focal therapy are positive. However, the majority of these seemed to be from the untreated portion of the gland or met criteria for clinically insignificant disease. The histological outcomes from focal therapy are promising and confirm its effectiveness in the short to medium term. Furthermore re-treatment is possible whilst maintaining a low-side-effect profile.
Conclusion: Debate is ongoing about the clinical significance of various levels of residual disease after focal therapy and the exact threshold at which to call failure within a patient who has had focal therapy.