The Assessment of Prostate Mechanical Behaviour Ex vivo - Version 1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Ex-vivo Assessment of Prostate Mechanical Behaviour Towards Robot-Assisted Tumour Removal ("Mechanically Intelligent" Tissue Quality Assessment)
IRAS ID
312294
Contact name
Daniel Good
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Heriot-Watt University
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 6 months, 31 days
Research summary
Prostate cancer (PCa) is a significant public health problem, with around 1 in 8 males in the UK being diagnosed with clinically significant PCa in their lifetime. Diagnosis begins with general practitioners (GPs) performing digital rectal examinations (DRE) and prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood tests. Common treatments include active surveillance for low risk cases, or robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) and external beam radio therapy for intermediate and higher risk cases.
Radical prostatectomy is classed as curative treatment for PCa, however the removal of the whole prostate gland does pose potential complications to patients’ post-surgery – including impotence, urinary issues and the risk of positive surgical margins. A typical measure of outcome after radical prostatectomy (RP) is the rate of positive surgical margins (PSMs), which implies some active tumour tissue is left in the patient and they may not be cured. One method of reducing PSM rates is by taking wider resections - however the risk to a patients’ quality of life must here be balanced with oncological outcome. The lack of force-feedback to surgeons during RARP makes judgement of tissue quality during surgery difficult, where palpable lesions may suggest a key area for surgeons to take a wider resection around the prostate.
The study proposed aims to take mechanical measurements (using a small probe) on ex-vivo prostate specimens after removal from patients undergoing radical prostatectomy at the Western General Hospital (WGH), Edinburgh (NHS Lothian). It is anticipated that a correlation exists between mechanical properties of prostatic tissue (eg tissue stiffness) and the tissue disease state as revealed by histopathology after surgery. This would confirm the potential significance of using tissue mechanical measurements as a “marker” for tumour detection during surgery for surgical margin assessment.
REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/NE/0086
Date of REC Opinion
8 Jun 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion