An unexpected diagnosis.

Thats great news . Hope it all works out for you.

Phil

Good news , go on and celebrate. 

Phil

What’s IFS?

I call it ’real time biopsy’ - can’t remember what the acronym stands for - done, I believe in only a handful of UK hospitals, mainly private. There is a pathologist on standby during the prostatectomy, and any suspicious prostate sections found are examined there and then to check if there is any cancer present. If not, they can be left in-situ. Clearly an advance in technology.

My friend who lives in the Virgin Islands and who has spent years in the sun, has numerous cancerous and pre-cancerous skin lesions for his trouble. He has just been to a specialist skin cancer dermatologist who is also qualified in skin cancer pathology, so she takes a slice, checks it under a microscope, then another slice until normal tissue is found. It took five slices off his nose to get back to ’good ground’ and he was there all day! Usually only two or three slices are required. God knows how much it cost him and he had to go back the next day for a similar procedure on his back.

Fortunately he had a big nose in the first place, despite several cosmetic rhinoplastys, so he still looks OK 😉.

Cheers,  John.

Edited by member 14 Feb 2019 at 09:24  | Reason: Not specified

Its called 'Intraoperative Frozen Section Biopsy' and has been used with positive results for a good number of years on women with breast cancer. Radical mastectomies have become a rarity and even mastectomies have been greatly reduced to lumpectomies. It is also regularly used for people with bowel cancer.

IFS is a difficult procedure that is based on judgement, experience and knowledge. What it provides for the surgeon is a rapid diagnosis, but regardless of that, the paraffin embedded tissue technique is also used as back up.

We were told that if any part of the tumor was difficult to diagnose, then more tissue than possibly necessary would be removed. The final decision is always with the pathologist and not the surgeon.

The operation does take longer but on average, that's by 20 minutes.

Speaking to the NHS PC surgeons at Addenbrookes, they have been campaigning to make this procedure available for sexually functional men who have locally advanced PC. The trials were very positive and that's why the private sector picked it up so quickly.

When I spoke to cancer research about this, they were very excited about the positive outcomes and said it was taking longer to reach the NHS (at least for PC) than they had hoped but that it would eventually be implemented as an NHS procedure.

Steve was told that he would have everything, including the entire nerves removed by his original potential surgeon.

The surgeon he used did use IFS but said that the cancer was sitting well beneath the nerves and he could see even when he went in that most of the nerves could probably be saved. Along with IFS he had over 80% of the nerves spared.

We obviously need to see the surgeon tomorrow and who knows what we are going to be told.

Too late for those of us who have already had surgery. Mine was 7 years ago.

Maria, I hope the results you get, (or got), today are good.

It sounds like things are going well and Steve is being well looked after.

His experience is similar to my own in that there's good indication that incontinence and ED can and will be overcome.

Since my surgery I can say I have sufficient confidence with these two to have remarried. Third anniversary in May!

I would say that it's early days for Steve and it can be a bit of a Rocky road. Confidence can be a problem and Steve should take any help or assistance offered. I wished I'd started on the pills and used the pump earlier, I think my road would have been less rocky.

One thing you may find, which is although things might turn out well, they'll never be quite as well as they used to be and success in one thing may cause issues with another.

Forewarned is forewarned and I hope Steve has been warned about the possibility of climacturia.

As I said, this is my first contribution on this site, I hope you found it helpful