العلاج بالتبريد لسرطان البروستات والكلى

Cryosurgery is a minimally invasive treatment that is currently used to treat prostate and renal cancer, in order to avoid undergoing surgery or radiotherapy. Besides being used when patients do not want to be treated by open surgery or radiation therapy, it can also be used as secondary treatment when the above fail. This technique is less invasive because it uses ultrafine needles of a very small size, similar to those used in biopsies, to destroy the tumour. This is an intervention that does not exceed two hours, allowing a speedy recovery, and is usually done under epidural anaesthesia. In the case of prostate tumours, it is customary to use cryosurgery in patients with very aggressive tumours, and with small prostates. The aim is to freeze the entire prostate to destroy all the cancer detected inside. With regard to kidney tumours, cryosurgery is also used to freeze all cancer cells contained in the kidney and can only be applied to small tumours (less than 4 cm in size).