Chronic abacterial prostatitis and hyperthermia. A possible new treatment?

A group of 45 patients with chronic abacterial prostatitis or prostatodynia underwent 6 weekly, 1-hour sessions of local deep microwave hyperthermia (42.5 +/- 0.5 degrees C) to the prostate. All patients had a long history of symptoms typical of the condition. They all failed to respond to a variety of conventional treatments administered over several years by various specialists. Each patient served as his own control before and after the hyperthermic treatment. The results of this study are encouraging: 25% showed a sustained and complete loss of symptoms and 50% had a partial response; the remaining 25% reported no improvement. These results open up new possibilities in the treatment of this condition, which has so far responded poorly to conventional therapy.