October 2020

After the tremendous success of the FOCAL2019 in Miami, the annual conference on the Frontiers in Oncologic Prostate Care and Ablative Local Therapy FOCAL2020 took place virtually where a lot of participants from the world over attended this cutting-edge meeting despite Covid-19 restrictions.

There were a lot of great presentations and discussions of which two really stood out:

• Prof. Mark Emberton, London, UK - Failure and Rescue: Mechanism and Management of Recurrence;
• Prof. Hashim U. Ahmed, London, UK – Mind the (Knowledge) Gap: Building Evidence for Focal Therapy with Clinical Trials.

We would like to highlight the abstract winners of the conference: the poster of Deepika Reddy at al., Imperial College London - Focal therapy compared to radical prostatectomy for non-metastatic prostate cancer: a propensity score matched study.

Considering there is a known lack of evidence directly comparing radical prostatectomy against focal therapy for prostate cancer, it was persuading to learn that the propensity matched analysis performed by Imperial College London shows likely non-inferiority between both treatments with similar rates of:

• Transition to salvage local / systematic therapy;
• Metastases / mortality.

In conclusion, focal therapy leads to similar oncological outcomes compared to laparoscopic radical prostatectomy in carefully selected patients.

For more information please see the video presentation:
https://vimeo.com/463219907