Prostate Cancer and HIFU: High Intensity Focused Ultrasound at NAU Urology Specialists

Thanks for tuning in to the Armor Men’s Health Hour Podcast today, where we bring you the latest and greatest in urology care and the best urology humor out there.

In this segment Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee discuss the holistic approach that makes NAU Urology Specialists a unique and cutting-edge practice. They also revisit the use of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) for treating prostate cancer. This treatment is noteworthy because it comes with zero side effects while still offering equal outcomes to the radical prostatectomy. 

If you or a loved one have questions regarding treatment options for prostate cancer, or if you have a urology or health-related question that you would like to hear answered on the air, please email your questions to armormenshealth@gmail.com. Questions are answered anonymously, unless otherwise specified, and the answers will likely benefit many people with the same concerns. 

If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share us with a friend! As always, be well!

 Dr. Mistry is a board-certified urologist and has been treating patients in the Austin and Greater Williamson County area since he started his private practice in 2007.

We enjoy hearing from you! Email us at armormenshealth@gmail.com and we’ll answer your question in an upcoming episode!

Phone: (512) 238-0762

Email: Armormenshealth@gmail.com

Website: Armormenshealth.com

Our Locations:

Round Rock Office

970 Hester’s Crossing Road
 Suite 101
 Round Rock, TX 78681

South Austin Office

6501 South Congress
 Suite 1-103
 Austin, TX 78745

Lakeline Office

12505 Hymeadow Drive
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 Austin, TX 78750

Dripping Springs Office

170 Benney Lane
 Suite 202
 Dripping Springs, TX 78620

Transcript

Donna Lee: 0:00

The Armor Men's Health Hour is brought to you by Urology Specialists. For questions during the week, call us at(512) 238-0762 or visit our website at armormenshealth.com. The Armor Men's Health Hour is a show dedicated to providing information on a variety of medical topics, some of which may include sensitive subject material about penises. All cases discussed have been done with the permission of the people involved and their penises.

Speaker 2: 0:35

Welcome to the Armor Men's Health Hour with Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee.

Dr. Mistry: 0:41

Hello and welcome to the Armor Men's Health Hour. I'm Dr. Mistry, your host, here as always with my cohost, the wonderful, funny, talented...Oh wait, no, it's Donna Lee today. Welcome Donna!

Donna Lee: 0:53

Oh, burn. You wonder why I'm not happier at the beginning of the show. Hi everybody.

Dr. Mistry: 0:58

You never know what's going to happen. No, I'm super lucky to have Donna Lee being a partner of this show and a partner in our practice.

Donna Lee: 1:05

That's right.

Dr. Mistry: 1:05

I am a board certified urologist. This is a men's health show. We have been so lucky to be able to give you a year's worth of shows now.

Donna Lee: 1:14

Been a whole year already.

Dr. Mistry: 1:14

Oh yeah, sure has been. And it's a...

Donna Lee: 1:15

We have tons of downloads now.

Dr. Mistry: 1:17

That's right.

Donna Lee: 1:19

We're podcast famous.

Dr. Mistry: 1:20

That's my podcast famous. I didn't know...

Donna Lee: 1:21

Are we Joe Rogen famous yet?

Dr. Mistry: 1:23

No.

Donna Lee: 1:23

Are we going to get a million dollars--no,$100 million--from Spotify?

Dr. Mistry: 1:28

I'm not telling you.

Donna Lee: 1:30

I'm not getting a raise, am I?

Dr. Mistry: 1:32

Not today, sorry. Anyway, this is a men's health show. I'm a board certified urologist, as mentioned. We have a urology practice. This show and our practice is NAU Urology Specialists. We have multiple offices around town. We deal with the entire multitude of urologic issues for both men and women. You know, several years ago I thought that kind of our take on men's health was somewhat unique. We have kind of a whole body holistic approach, multiple different specialties and disciplines reflected in our practice. And I thought there's no way to communicate that. We used to go to primary care doctors and communicate that, but then you know, they got too busy, they wouldn't want...

Donna Lee: 2:10

They wouldn't want to see us anymore...

Dr. Mistry: 2:14

...and so...

Donna Lee: 2:14

They were like,"We got you, we got your card. Just go away."

Dr. Mistry: 2:16

And then if the patients didn't know that they were going to get that kind of service level when they walked in, they were completely surprised that we would refer them for nutrition or biomechanical therapy or whatnot...

Donna Lee: 2:25

Within the clinic.

Dr. Mistry: 2:26

And the radio show just becomes a wonderful way to kind of prime the community on what we do, prime our competition on what we do...

Donna Lee: 2:33

Well, we still are the second largest in town.

Dr. Mistry: 2:37

You know what second best means?

Donna Lee: 2:39

We're prettier on the weekends.

Dr. Mistry: 2:40

That's right. Second biggest means we're pretty on the weekends. Why don't you tell people about our practice?

Donna Lee: 2:45

You can get ahold of us during the week at(512) 238-0762. You know, a listener said that I have a voice like butter on a warm biscuit.

Dr. Mistry: 2:55

That's pretty good.

Donna Lee: 2:56

Wasn't that good?

Dr. Mistry: 2:56

Yes, that's right.

Donna Lee: 2:57

That made me have a happy day all day long. Our website is armormenshealth.com, and our email address is armormenshealth@gmail.com. We will answer your questions anonymously on air. They'll, they will turn into a podcast that I can send you that you can share with your family and friends. So that's kind of cool.

Dr. Mistry: 3:12

Well there you go. There you go. And we still have like what, 7,000 shirts that we need to give away?

Donna Lee: 3:16

Maybe, maybe 6,000 now. But we do have a lot of t-shirts, so if you want one, please reach out to me. We have some really cute t-shirts for the show.

Dr. Mistry: 3:23

This has been a big week for us. A big part of what we do in our urology practice is the treatment for prostate cancer. If you've been a listener of the show, you may be aware that we do a special kind of treatment. It's not widely available. It's called high intensity focused ultrasound or HIFU treatment for prostate cancer. It is almost too good to be true, Donna Lee.

Donna Lee: 3:46

It really is because there's no side effects basically.

Dr. Mistry: 3:48

Well, I can't say that on the air, but...

Donna Lee: 3:50

Hardly any? That works?

Dr. Mistry: 3:52

...but I can say that we have patients, I would say about 70 to 80% of our patients that get this treatment for prostate cancer come from outside of Austin. It's not widely available. It is a one day procedure that is painless, that uses ultrasound energy to identify where cancer is and to ablate it using this ultrasound energy is like a magnifying glass that focuses the sun's rays on a point that ultrasound energy can kill the prostate cancer. If you've been diagnosed with prostate cancer and you're on watchful waiting, or you're awaiting, you know, some thought on how to treat it and you haven't been given the option of HIFU--H.I.F.U--it's definitely something that we is probably our most popular reason for people to get a second opinion. This year in our own, excuse me, this week in our own literature, it was shown that just treating where the tumor is in your prostate called focal therapy, just treating where it is, had equivalent treatment outcomes to radical prostatectomy, a radical surgery. And I've been doing robotic surgery for almost 20 years now. This is not something that is new to me or new to our practice, but the idea that we can provide focal therapy for just where your cancer is and give you lower side effects, equivalent treatment outcomes, much easier decision making is something that makes me really happy.

Donna Lee: 5:12

That's right. And we have some podcasts about this from a while back. So it's great to refresh.

Dr. Mistry: 5:17

That's right now that we've been going on for so long, our newer listeners may not be interested in going back and I think we're a little afraid of them listening to us from way back then.

Donna Lee: 5:25

I think we should take those down, the first ones. I think we sounded like robots.

Dr. Mistry: 5:28

Having the cover on the microphone really helped, helped how things sound. We have an amazing nutrition program as well. Robert Mendiola, our nutritionist, will put all of our prostate cancer and virtually all of our cancer patients on what we think is a very cancer specific nutrition program. And if you haven't been given advice about that from either your oncologist or from your urologist or whoever's diagnosed your cancer, certainly, we have excellent outcomes, ways to follow and wonderful support when it comes to understanding how do patients with cancer, whether they're treated or not, benefit from a nutritional program. And if you haven't been given that advice before, I certainly think that you deserve it to get that advice. The most of these services are covered by insurance. So, out of pocket costs are not something that are usually a burden to get this information. Really the burden is whether or not your medical provider has been able to educate themselves or collect the resources necessary to educate you on this particular topic, and of course, spend the time, which is the most valuable kind of resource on earth.

Donna Lee: 6:34

Right, and you're giving that time still to patients.

Dr. Mistry: 6:37

We're trying, we're trying.

Donna Lee: 6:39

Yeah, telemedicine appointment. I know, I've seen you go into 45 minute discussion at no charge.

Dr. Mistry: 6:44

You know what's going to work out really well for us is that the newest of the new technology, high intensity focused ultrasound, the company that has manufactured this machine right here in Austin, EDAP Technologies, they have agreed to give us really almost exclusive access to the newest of technologies. It's quicker, it's easier, fewer side effects and bigger prostates can be treated. It is a new era in our prostate cancer treatment program. And I look forward to...

Donna Lee: 7:15

I know you're excited.

Dr. Mistry: 7:15

Oh, I'm pretty excited.

Donna Lee: 7:17

Treating patients and less side effects...What?!

Dr. Mistry: 7:20

That's right. That's right.

Donna Lee: 7:22

What a great idea.

Dr. Mistry: 7:23

You know, being in private practice and not in the academic arena per se, you don't necessarily always get your hands on just kind of the latest and greatest before everyone else. And the fact that we're going to be able to do that now and really help, you know, hundreds of men treat their prostate cancer with fewer side effects and equivalent outcomes is something that is really exciting.

Donna Lee: 7:48

It is exciting. And we had a patient who came on, we have a whole podcast of him so you can Google"HIFU and Mark" in our podcast and the side effects he talks about, well the lack of side effects is pretty impressive. He said he stayed home for a week afterwards and it was fine.

Dr. Mistry: 8:03

That's right. And I think that, you know, those men that are concerned about their either avoiding radiation or keeping their erectile function and continence, and if you have localized tumors, and especially if you have a tumor that conveyed identified by MRI, this is spectacular. This is MRI fusion technology that we can use to treat your cancer. And so if you're interested, Donna Lee, how do people get ahold of us for a second opinion?

Donna Lee: 8:28

You can call us at(512) 238-0762. We are in Round Rock, North Austin, South Austin in Dripping Springs...we're all over the place. What's our website? It's armormenshealth.com. You can also send questions to the website through the website in the little contact us form, and then you can also email us at armormenshealth@gmail.com.

Dr. Mistry: 8:49

You know that last statement I made about private practice vs. academic medicine made me think about something interesting that happened this week.

Donna Lee: 8:55

Uh oh, what was that?

Dr. Mistry: 8:57

That was that I am a clinical professor of urology for Texas A and M University and I haven't been in the classroom for about 5 or 6 months because of how the rotations have worked out. But this week I had to teach 98 medical students via Zoom how to examine a man. And it was fascinating.

Donna Lee: 9:26

I bet. What part of the man?

Dr. Mistry: 9:26

...so I got, you know...The man, the man parts. And so I had to demonstrate how to do a male genital exam as well as a rectal exam on zoom...

Donna Lee: 9:38

...with prototypes.

Dr. Mistry: 9:40

...with like...

Donna Lee: 9:41

...with sex dolls.

Dr. Mistry: 9:41

...with like actual dolls. No, they're not sex dolls.

Donna Lee: 9:45

But I want them to be sex dolls.

Dr. Mistry: 9:46

Oh no, they'd be cheaper as a matter of fact.

Donna Lee: 9:49

Absolutely!

Dr. Mistry: 9:49

And so it was just a fascinating experience of how do you communicate something as intimate as a genital physical exam with these medical students.

Donna Lee: 9:59

How did you do that?

Dr. Mistry: 10:00

Well, we had a wonderful video and we had some other people that came in to kind of just demonstrate positioning and how we do these things. And then the back and forth in terms of them being able to ask us questions on, you know, in this interactive but separate, kind of way. And...

Donna Lee: 10:19

Was there any delay? Like, did the video stop like it does every time I have a meeting?

Dr. Mistry: 10:23

I thought it went pretty good.

Donna Lee: 10:24

Alright.

Dr. Mistry: 10:25

I'm not gonna say which company it was...

Donna Lee: 10:27

That'd be awkward, though, if you were at a very sensitive part of the exam and then it freezes.

Dr. Mistry: 10:31

Yes. Yes."Be careful if you see one of the..." That's right. That's why radio is so awesome because you know, radio signals, you know, anyway...One last time Donna Lee, people, tell people our number.

Donna Lee: 10:45

That's right. You can call us at(512) 238-0762. You can even ask for me during the week or send us your emails to armormenshealth@gmail.com and our website is armormenshealth.com. We'll be right back.

: 10:57

The Armor Men's Health Hour will be right back. If you have questions for Dr. Mistry, email him at armormenshealth@gmail.com.