Aggressive therapies are aimed at the potential of curing the prostate cancer by removing all of the cancer cells from the patient's body. Each of these therapies have some specific areas of potential benefit and also some specific associated risks. It is important to understand these potential risks and benefits in order to make an adequate conclusion about your treatment plan. The perineal approach does not, by itself, allow for removal of the lymph nodes, which drain from the prostate and would require a second procedure to sample these lymph nodes. This second procedure can be done laparoscopically, i.e., through a series of scopes being inserted into the abdominal cavity in order to visualize and remove the lymph nodes.
Radical prostatectomy is a surgical procedure, which has been performed for many years.
Technically, this surgery typically requires 2-3 hours to complete. The other primary complication associated with surgery is difficulty in controlling urine. This stress urinary incontinence, commonly occurring in women, is an inadvertent loss of drops of urine with coughing, sneezing, lifting, etc. This mild incontinence may require the patient to wear a liner inside of their underclothes to control this problem. The advantage of surgery is that the cancer is eliminated from the body if the patient's cancer cells are completely contained within the prostate gland.