Safety and Efficacy Evaluation of Transperineal Irreversible Electroporation (IRE) of Anterior Prostate Cancer

There are different effective treatment options for intermediate risk prostate cancer to choose from. The standard of care are definite treatments such as robotic surgery or radiotherapy. Robotic surgeries involve the removal of the entire prostate. On the other hand, radiotherapy is a form of treatment that is done by either an external beam at high and low dose rate or by brachytherapy. The external beam at high or low dose rate targets the entire prostate. Brachytherapy, which involves a special radiation source that is placed inside the tumour, targets only specific parts of the prostate. Both robotic surgeries and radiotherapy provide a greater certainty of cancer control than any other treatments option, however there is a significant risk of side effects that many follow these treatments. Among which, there is a 50% likelihood for impotence, 5-10% likelihood of incontinence and 5-20% likelihood of bowel dysfunction. One way of reducing the unwanted side-effects from radical treatment of prostate cancer may be to direct treatment to only areas of the cancer. This is called focal therapy, which is the form of treatment that will be performed and observed in this study. There has been recent research done on focal therapies that have been shown to be more advantageous than having radical therapy or radiotherapy. Some of these advantages include: decrease of chance or elimination of possible side-effects post-treatment, it is a less invasive treatment option and the omission of overnight hospital stay post-treatment, among others. This study is designed to look at an experimental treatment of localized prostate cancer by Focal Irreversible Electroporation (IRE) delivered by the NanoKnife System.