[Transrectal hyperthermia for chronic prostatitis].

Transrectal hyperthermia was performed on 13 patients with chronic non-bacterial prostatitis which failed to respond to the conventional treatments. We used "Prostathermer" (Biodan-Medical system, Israel) for heating the prostate gland. The prostate was heated at 42 degrees C-43 degrees C, for 60 minutes in 1 session. Treatment consisted of 6 sessions, and was performed during a period of three weeks on an outpatient basis. Of 11 patients re-evaluated after 3 months, 6 (55%) achieved improvement of subjective symptoms. Of 9 patients, 4 (44%) showed reduction of the number of white blood cells (> or = 10 leukocytes count per high-power field) in their expressed prostatic secretion (EPS), which however was not always correlate with improvement of subjective symptoms. No complications were encountered in our series. Our result indicates that local hyperthermia is safe, and would become new modality in the treatment for chronic prostatitis.