Despite Doubts, Cancer Therapy Draws Patients - New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/health/18prostate.html?_r=1 & ref=health & oref=slogin

Tropical

beaches aside, there is a reason that hundreds of American men have traveled

out of the country to receive HIFU. It is not approved in the United States.

And its growing popularity has some cancer experts

voicing caution. They argue that there is not yet enough evidence that the

treatment stops cancer over the long run and they say the side effects are not

as minimal as described by US HIFU, the company sponsoring the offshore

treatment weekends.

The

company is attracting attention for its aggressive recruitment of American

doctors who will go through training and perform the treatments. The company

charges patients $25,000 to $30,000, a fee that is usually not reimbursed by

insurance. Of that, the company pays the doctors $5,000 to $7,500 —

several times what physicians earn for conventional prostate cancer procedures

in the United States.

Critics

worry that financial motives might influence medical decisions.

“The

people doing the treatments down there, they’re just printing

money,” said Dr. A. Gardner, an Indiana University School of Medicine urologist who has been involved in

clinical studies of HIFU and who, despite his concerns, is enthusiastic about

its potential. “Anytime anyone’s printing money, doing what’s

right for the patient gets a little blurry.”