Researchers have discovered that using the NeuroSAFE approach to information nerve sparing throughout robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) improved patient-reported erectile operate amongst sufferers with prostate most cancers, examine outcomes have proven.
Findings from the NeuroSAFE PROOF section 3 trial, carried out at 5 Nationwide Well being Service Hospitals in the UK, have been printed in The Lancet Oncology and introduced on the 2025 European Affiliation of Urology Congress in Madrid.
Glossary:
Radical prostatectomy: surgical removing of the prostate.
“In abstract, this trial confirms the efficacy of the NeuroSAFE approach to enhance useful outcomes after RARP in sufferers with good preoperative urinary and erectile operate,” Dr. Greg Shaw and colleagues wrote in The Lancet Oncology. “These findings ought to inform guideline updates and ensure the function of the NeuroSAFE approach as an adjunct to information nerve-sparing.”
Shaw is the lead for robotic urology for College School London Hospitals and a professor of urology at College School London.
NeuroSAFE, which has been utilized in Germany for greater than a decade, permits surgeons to find out whether or not preserving the prostate’s outer nerve layers is protected with out compromising most cancers removing, because the European Affiliation of Urology defined on its web site.
Amongst 344 sufferers who underwent surgical procedure for prostate most cancers — 173 within the NeuroSAFE group and 171 in the usual RARP group at a median follow-up of 12.3 months — 39% of sufferers within the NeuroSAFE group had no or delicate erectile dysfunction versus 23% of sufferers within the RARP group.
Shaw sat down for an interview with CURE to debate the examine and its findings.
Transcript:
The trial that we introduced in Madrid, that coincided with the Lancet Oncology paper, is definitive proof that the brand new approach that we trialed, the NeuroSAFE approach, permits us to assist extra males get again to efficiency after radical prostatectomy. Radical prostatectomy, as a few of you’ll most likely bear in mind, is an operation used to treatment prostate most cancers. It is actually good for curing prostate most cancers.
Nonetheless, many males are left with negative effects, [including] urinary incontinence and erectile issues. Utilizing this system, we doubled the variety of males who have been capable of get regular erections after the process in comparison with our commonplace strategy.
Transcript has been edited for readability and conciseness.
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