Last Update: Thursday, November 25, 2004. 12:02pm (AEDT)

Victoria's Ballarat Hospital is testing a new treatment for prostate
cancer that uses grains of gold.

Ten men are participating in the
Australian-first trial, which involves inserting three rice-sized pieces
of 24-carat gold into the prostate using ultrasound.

Dr Andrew See, from the Ballarat-Austin Radiation Oncology Centre, says
the technique saves money and makes radiotherapy treatment more
accurate.
He says the gold itself is not a cancer cure.

"They're inert, without any radioactivity, don't do anything at all for
the cancer," he said.

"What it does enable us to do is to act like a global positioning
device.
"What we do when men come for treatment is we can accurately detect
within one or two millimetres the centre of where the prostate is,
thereby fine-tuning our external treatment."

Dr See says the grains of gold can cost up to $300 each but it is money
well spent.
"With this technique, we can achieve really what can be done with
considerable infrastructure upgrade that would normally cost up
something in the order of $3 [to] $5 million," he said.
"So the advantage of this technique is it's a quick, simple, effective
way of actually saving cost to the community."

knowledge is power - growing old is mandatory - growing wise is optional    
"Many more men die with prostate cancer than of it. Growing old is
invariably fatal. Prostate cancer is only sometimes so."
http://community.webtv.net/PALMER_ENT/doc