Prostate Cancer Surgery Cryosurgery

Prostate cancer surgery cryosurgery freezes and thaws the prostate twice to destroy all of the prostate cancer cells. Prostate cancer cells become damaged not from the freezing but from the thawing out process. When freezing occurs fluids expand and line up into specific crystal shapes that can be seen in snowflakes and ice. This rearrangement of the molecules causes the volume of a substance to get larger and lose the properties that it had as a fluid.

Prostate cancer surgery cryosurgery turns the prostate into an ice ball, then the prostate is quickly heated and the crystalline tissue is dissolved back into wet tissue or viscous cells. Inside of our cells are many organs that the cell is composed of which are called organelles. Each organelle has to perform properly in order to keep the cell alive. The cell nucleus that holds our DNA, the mitochondria that generates energy, the lysosomes (the cells recycling plant) that breaks down carbohydrates, fats, protein, viruses, bacteria, and nonworking organelles,  ribosomes that create the proteins of our body, and the plasma membrane or cell walls, all of which can become damaged once they are brought back to a wet consistency. Some damage that has been seen to occur in cells includes the ice crystals puncturing the cell walls which can make the lysosome’s acidic contents spill out into the cell along with the lysosomes digestive enzymes which begins to breakdown other organelles.

Prostate cancer surgery cryosurgery needs to keep the urethra warm and yet freeze the entire prostate that surrounds it. This is done by placing thin hollow rods (cryoprobes) into the prostate and filling them up by circulating argon gas through the cryoprobes. At the same time a warming catheter is placed into the urethra keeping the urethra from freezing.  As the prostate starts to freeze, temperature probes, that are strategically placed in and near the prostate and urethra allow the urology specialists to determine when the prostate has turned into an ice ball. The prostate is then thawed by removing the argon gas from the cryoprobes and circulating helium gas through the probes. By watching the temperature in the prostate rise the urologist knows when it has thawed. The whole process is then run once more, freezing the prostate and thawing the prostate. By freezing the prostate and thawing it twice the prostate cancer cells should have been destroyed. During this process the healthy prostate cells are also destroyed. Over the next few months the dead cells are passed out of our body via the immune systems macrophage cells and killer T-cells that eventually put them into the digestive system.

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