According to a new study the best way to deal with early prostate cancer for many men would be a new procedure called "male lumpectomy".

"Male lumpectomy", is a minimally invasive procedure that freezes tumors but leaves the rest of the prostate intact and results in fewer side effects than surgery or radiation therapy. The study suggests that it might prove especially beneficial for men who have local prostate cancer or those for whom radiation has not worked.

In a presentation to this week's meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology's annual meeting in San Diego, Gary M. Onik, MD, director of the Center for Safer Prostate Cancer Therapy and professor of radiology at the University of Central Florida, Orlando said, "This is a new paradigm where instead of treating the whole gland, you just treat the cancer. We have shown that you have the same advantages in the local treatment of prostate cancer that women have found with local treatment of breast cancer."

In the study Onik used the freezing technique, called cryoablation, to treat 120 men with prostate cancer. The procedure involves a probe being inserted through the skin, and a doctor uses imaging to guide the needle to the tumor. Once at the site of the tumor, the probe circulates cold gas to freeze and destroy the cancerous tissue.

In the follow-up period of 3 ½ years 112 men did not have a recurrence of cancer, while 72 men were at a high risk of their cancer returning. The plus points were that none of the side effects associated with radical prostatectomy and radiation therapy of incontinence and sexual dysfunction occur in this case.

After the procedure none of the men reported side effects of incontinence and of the men who were potent before the procedure, 85 % retained the potency. "We've reached a tipping point," Onik said. "Treating only the tumor instead of the whole prostate gland is a major and profound departure from the current thinking about prostate cancer."

The treatment works best on men who have minimal disease and usually don't receive treatment but are monitored and men who have failed radiation treatment are good candidates, as are men with more severe localized cancer, he said.

Expressing worries at the short duration of the follow up, Dr. Durado Brooks, director of colon and prostate cancer prevention programs at the American Cancer Society said, "A lot of the problems, particularly the recurrence of cancer, are in a five- to 10-year window."

"The study does lend some additional credence to the potential value of cryoablation, as long as men recognize that there are significant limitations," Brooks said. "The main one being, we don't have as nearly as long a history on cryoablation as we do on either surgery or radiation treatment."