Prostate Cancer Treatments in 2026
Professor Phillip Stricker AO, MBBS(Hons), FRACS(Urology) is a urologist and one of the leading experts in the management and treatment of prostate cancer in Australasia. He is the Director of the St Vincent’s Prostate Cancer Centre, Chairman of the Department of Urology at St Vincent’s Private Hospital and Clinic and the Clinical Director of the Australian Prostate Cancer Research Centre in New South Wales (NSW). He is also a professor and associate professor at numerous recognised Institutions, University of Western Sydney, University of NSW and University of Sydney.
His clinical practice is dedicated to the management and treatment of prostate cancer, focusing on personalised care. This includes initial consultation, second opinions, therapy and follow-up of all post-treatment side effects, including erectile dysfunction and incontinence.
In 2006, Prof Stricker commenced the first robotic program using the latest technology (Da Vinci Si) in NSW at St Vincent’s Private Hospital. He has since performed almost 3000 robot-assisted radical prostatectomies. This is the second largest experience in Australia and the largest in NSW. In addition, previously, he has performed over 4000 open radical prostatectomies. This combined experience is the most in Australia. He also has extensive experience in performing high-dose rate brachytherapy (over 1000 cases), low-dose rate brachytherapy (over 1000 cases), designing and managing structured active surveillance programs and transperineal biopsies (over 10,000 cases).
Prof Stricker was the Head and Chairman of the Uro-oncology Multidisciplinary Team meetings for over 20 years.
He has been one of the Australian pioneers in the use of multiparametric MRI and PSMA-PET scan imaging and the introduction of focal therapy using irreversible electroporation-IRE (Nano-Knife) to treat prostate cancer, and has performed over 800 cases.
He mentors nationally and internationally, and has published over 40 articles on nanoknife technology and outcomes. He also has extensive experience in dealing with impotence and incontinence assessment, and treatments including penile prosthesis, sling surgery and artificial urinary sphincter surgery.
Professor Stricker’s area of research focuses on the collection of quality of life data following treatment in order to refine surgical techniques, the development and assessment of novel surgical techniques which are less invasive, the introduction of new technologies for treating prostate cancer, and the utilisation of medical imaging for the detection and evaluation of prostate cancer.
Professor Stricker was the driving force in setting up the St Vincent’s Prostate Cancer Clinical Database and Tissue Bank in conjunction with the Garvan Institute, which is currently housed at The Kinghorn Cancer Centre. These resources contain extensive clinical and pathological outcome data and have resulted in a comprehensive scientific and clinical resource that has been acknowledged both nationally and internationally.
Professor Stricker was a Member of the Australian Cancer Network working party that developed guidelines for the management of localised prostate cancer, metastatic prostate cancer, and PSA Testing. These guidelines have been published and are used as the evidence base in many publications. Professor Stricker has authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications.
Prostate Cancer Treatments in 2026
Single Port Robot-Assisted Radical Prostatectomy
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The latest robotic-assisted surgical treatment for prostate cancer.
A new form of robotic radical prostatectomy is called single port robotic radical prostatectomy. This involves the same principles with a key hole approach, but instead of six holes, you have one or maximum two holes. I performed the first single port operations in New South Wales in January 2026, and I was quite impressed with the speed of recovery of these patients. I was very selective about picking the right patients for this treatment because if you've got a high grade cancer which is outside of the shell, there's no real benefit of this treatment, and in fact, you could argue that you may be compromising the cancer outcome, which of course is not something we should be considering. But the benefit of it is that patients are usually ready to go home the next day, sometimes even the same day. The recovery is quicker, and because it's below the belly button, the chance of any hernia in the long term is much reduced compared to multi-port, where there's a 2-3% chance of hernia formation. So, what are the results of single port surgery and who's the ideal candidate? The results of the European meta-analysis show that single port results are similar to multi-port results, with one difference that there's a quicker recovery with single port. So it doesn't make it a better cancer operation, it doesn't make it a better continence operation, it just means that it's a quicker recovery. So who's suitable for it? The ideal person is a person with a prostate size of less than 60 cubic centimetres, a person with a grade 2 or 3, Gleason 3 plus 4 or 4 plus 3 tumor, multifocal, a person who's not morbidly obese, and a person who hasn't had operations in that area before, such as laparoscopic hernia operations, which make this procedure much more difficult. So if you're ideal and if that's your choice to speed up your recovery, then you're a very good candidate for that procedure.