Physicians at the Jewish General Hospital are hailing new surgical procedures they believe will improve care for prostate cancer patients.

Alex Brzezinski, who likes to keep in shape, is one of them. The 71 year-old plays tennis three times a week in addition to other sporting activities.

“I feel good, could still lose a few pounds,” he joked.

So he keeps active, glad that his life hasn’t changed much despite undergoing treatment for prostate cancer last year. That’s thanks in part, his doctors say, to procedures that are changing the way physicians treat some forms of prostate cancer.

“This is a treatment for localized prostate cancer that is unilateral,” explained Dr. Maurice Anidjar, urology department chief at the Jewish General Hospital.

“You use a source of energy that can be high intensity focused ultrasound electricity, and others, to destroy the side that is affected by the significant cancer.”

The two procedures being used at the Jewish General Hospital are irreversible electroporation (IRE) as well as the high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU). The advantage — the whole prostate doesn’t have to be treated, as happens with other forms of treatment, Anidjar pointed out.

“Most of the time (it involves) the ablation of the prostate or the radiation of the whole prostate, and this induces side effects that can affect significantly the quality of life of the patient, like prolonged incontinence or delayed or partial loss of sexual function” he noted.

According to him, with the IRE and the HIFU procedures, there are no side effects, .

“I don’t want my life to change — it’s very good,” said Brzezinski, who had the IRE. “I don’t particularly want anything to change about it.” So he was happy to go with it.

Jewish General Hospital officials say that institution is the only one in Quebec to use the IRE — and one of few in Canada. They’ve been using HIFU since 2014, but in 2022 the technology was “substantially upgraded with the acquisition of new and more technically demanding equipment,” according to a hospital press release.

Doctors here believe both procedures are game-changers since so many men are affected by the illness.

“(The disease) is very prevalent,” observed Dr. Rafael Sanchez-Salas, an MUHC urologist. “There’s a high number of diagnoses and it’s not only based on a particular characteristic. It’s a fact of having people aging.”

According to the Canadian Cancer Society, prostate cancer is the leading cancer among Canadian men. They estimate that in 2024, 27, 900 Canadian men will be diagnosed — 22 per cent of all new cancer cases — and that 5, 000 men will die from the disease, representing 11 per cent of cancer deaths among men this year.

Brzezinski is happy his cancer was caught in time.