The man on the operating table is 50, fit and otherwise healthy. Under the care of a different doctor, he might be waking up without a prostate. But today, inside a brightly lit English operating room at Parkside Hospital in Wimbledon, surgeon Hashim Ahmed has other plans.
The patient, under general anesthesia, lies still, legs suspended in stirrups—an undignified posture, but necessary for what comes next. Ahmed, chair of urology at Imperial College London, consults an ultrasound screen to guide a probe into place alongside the patient’s walnut-size prostate. The tumor is small, just 10 millimeters (0.4 inches) across, but it’s the kind that usually requires aggressive radiation, surgery or hormone treatment, which attack the whole gland. Ahmed is using a different technique: Bursts of high-intensity sound from the probe will cook the cancer with pinpoint precision, sparing the surrounding tissue.