Post Date December, 03 2023
Microwave therapy for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is a newly emerging physical therapy technology for BPH both at home and abroad in recent years.
Microwave is actually not mysterious. In recent years, the microwave ovens used for cooking in daily life, soft tissue damage or joint pain in hospitals, such as microwave hyperthermia, have caused many people to come into contact with microwave.
Microwave is a high-frequency electromagnetic wave with characteristics similar to light. When microwaves irradiate biological tissue, the polar molecules within the tissue oscillate back and forth at high frequencies of billions of times per second and generate heat. When microwave heating reaches 38 ℃~43 ℃, the blood flow of normal tissues in the human body increases, and the ability to contain oxygen increases. This is the principle of using ordinary microwave physiotherapy for disease rehabilitation. Cancer cells are very sensitive to heat, and it is generally believed that when heated to above 43 ℃, cancer cells can be killed, so microwave can be used to treat cancer. However, for BPH, temperatures below 43 ℃ are no longer useful. Medical workers have found that when local heating reaches 45 ℃, especially above 50 ℃, irreversible protein coagulation and vascular occlusion can occur in both abnormal and normal tissues. This is the principle of microwave therapy for benign prostatic hyperplasia. Due to the high temperature required for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia, which may cause damage to normal tissues, microwave therapy machines are equipped with temperature measuring devices and automatic computer monitoring. Some therapeutic devices also add a water cooling circulation system to protect normal tissues such as the urethral mucosa.
There are generally three types of microwave therapy for benign prostatic hyperplasia: one is transurethral prostate hyperthermia; One is transrectal prostate hyperthermia; Another type is non-invasive, which requires treatment from outside the body without either the urethra or the rectum.
There are two types of transurethral probes for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia. One is to insert the probe into the urethra and locate it at the prostate after local anesthesia, and then give microwave irradiation; The other adds a circulating water cooling system to protect the urethral mucosa, limiting heating to the prostate. The main advantages of transurethral microwave treatment of the prostate are:
1. The microwave irradiation source is located in the center of the prostate, close to the lesion, and has high efficiency;
2. Most patients only need a single dose of radiation to achieve therapeutic effects, without the need for repeated treatment;
Its disadvantages are:
1. The treatment requires intubation into the urethra, which can cause discomfort, and some patients are unwilling to accept this treatment;
2. There is a possibility of causing local injury, hematuria, and infection.
Although microwave therapy for transrectal prostate hyperplasia also requires intubation into the body cavity, entering the rectum is much more comfortable than entering the urethra, and patients are more likely to accept it. However, due to the fact that the source of transrectal microwave therapy is located on one side of the prostate tissue, which is farther away from the prostate than transurethral treatment, and it is relatively difficult to obtain a therapeutic effect compared to transurethral treatment, it often requires multiple repeated treatments to be effective.
Non interventional microwave therapy is similar to the form of conventional microwave physiotherapy, where the patient only needs to sit on a special chair. After the doctor starts the machine, the microwave will focus on the prostate for hyperthermia. The advantage of this treatment is that it is simple and convenient, and patients not only have no pain, but also do not even need to take off their clothes; The disadvantage is that the microwave transmitter is far from the prostate and requires repeated treatment to be effective.
