TESTIMONIAL

Patient Comments- Charles PDF | Print | E-mail
Patient Comments- Charles
"My name is Charles. I am the President and Founder of The Cancer Cure Coalition, a U.S. government approved non-profit foundation. The Foundation’s mission is to help cure and prevent cancer. Our website, www.cancercurecoalition.org, gives more information about our work.

We are especially interested in new and better treatments for cancer, particularly those that do less harm to the patient. On June 4, 2004, the Executive Director of my foundation and I visited with Dr. George Suarez at his office in Miami, Florida. Dr. Suarez is a board-certified urologist and he is the medical director of USHIFU, a company that markets equipment for high intensity focused ultrasound treatment.

We visited him to obtain information about the use of high intensity focused ultrasound for Prostate cancer patients. We learned that the treatment is in clinical trials in the United States and has already been approved in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, China, Japan, as well as leading countries in Europe.

We found Dr. Suarez to be a highly qualified urologist who has been using high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for the treatment of prostate cancer patients for about a year. He told us he had successfully performed HIFU treatments on about 125 prostate cancer patients and that none of them had incontinency or impotence following treatment.

My Executive Director and I were both impressed by Dr. Suarez’s competency and we were excited about the potential of this new treatment for prostate cancer patients. Also for me personally, the information we obtained had a special importance.

I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in the beginning of 2000. Initially I had success in controlling it using PC Spes, an herbal remedy, and a nutritional program. The details of my treatment are described on the Foundation website.

Recently my PSA started to rise, going over 20 and both my oncologist and urologist recommended I use hormonal castration possibly to be followed by cryoablation surgery. I was reluctant to do this because of the adverse side effects of these treatments and after learning about HIFU, I began to consider using it as an alternative.

About one week later, I visited Dr. Suarez again, this time with my wife and I asked him to take me as a patient. After a physical examination and a review of my records by Dr. Suarez, on his recommendation I decided to try the HIFU treatment.

It was done in the Dominican Republic on June 25th. There was no hospitalization and the treatment was done as an outpatient. The HIFU treatment itself took about two hours. I was awake during the procedure with anesthesia only from my waist down and I had no pain. After the procedure, I was taken back to the hotel and that evening I was able to get up for a dinner in my room.

The following day I toured the city of Santiago and the next day I flew back to New York City, carrying heavy bags. I wore a catheter for 12 days. My current side effects from the treatment are minimal bleeding in the urine. This is expected to stop in a few weeks as the remains of the cells from the prostate gland are expelled.

Although it is too early for me to report on the curative effects of the treatment, I can already say that I do not believe any other invasive treatment has the minimal side effects of HIFU. Certainly surgery, radiation and chemical or surgical castration are more harmful in their side effects on the patients.

It is my hope that HIFU will be approved in the United States as it has been elsewhere, and that it will be of benefit to many prostate cancer patients. There is even the possibility of this treatment being used for other cancers such as breast, liver and kidney, as is already being done in China.

Charles