Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The risk of losing sexual function and urine control may be greater in men who have prostate cancer surgery designed to reduce hospital stays than those having traditional operations, a Harvard researcher found.

The technique, in which surgeons make three or four small cuts in the abdomen, is used in 40 percent of procedures to remove the prostate. Men undergoing the surgery were 40 percent more likely to be impotent and 30 percent more likely to be incontinent, according to the findings published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Doctors may be less experienced with the minimally invasive technique, said Otis Brawley, the chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, an Atlanta-based organization. The newer surgery, replacing the need for a large abdominal incision, was introduced in 2001. Intuitive Surgical Inc. which makes a robot that can be used for the newer surgery, fell in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading.

“The tendency in Americans is to gravitate toward the latest technology,” said Brawley, who wasn’t involved in the study, by telephone. “This is not the first time that new technology has been evaluated and has more shortcomings than we actually thought.”

The research was led by Jim Hu, a urologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The Defense Department funded the work.

Intuitive Surgery

Intuitive Surgical, whose da Vinci product is the only robot available for the operation, fell $4.36, or 1.7 percent, to $249.64 at 4:09 p.m. New York time. The Sunnyvale, California-based company’s shares had doubled in value this year before today.

Men who underwent minimally invasive radical prostatectomy, as the newer procedure is called, spent an average of 2 days in the hospital, compared with 3 days for those who underwent the older surgery. About 2.7 percent of them had transfusions, compared with almost 21 percent of men who getting traditional surgery.

The number of men who needed additional treatment for prostate cancer didn’t differ, the study found.

Prostate cancer will be the most common malignancy in U.S. men this year, with 192,280 new cases, according to the American Cancer Society. The disease is the second- highest killer among cancers with 27,360 deaths.

The report was based on the results for 1,938 men who underwent the newer procedure and 6,899 men who had the older procedure. The older procedure has had 20 years of surgeons performing it, so their techniques may be better, Brawley said.

Cut Prostate

Nerves, arteries and veins surround the prostate, Brawley said. In order to remove the prostate and allow men to have erections and control their sphincters, the nerves around the prostate can’t be cut or stretched during the surgery.

“It’s like taking tape off a piece of paper without ripping the paper,” Brawley said.

He’s been discouraging patients from minimally invasive surgery because most surgeons haven’t been doing it long enough to perfect their technique, Brawley said.

Brawley doesn’t know if today’s finding will discourage men from minimally invasive prostatectomy, he said.

“I can tell you, though, most men in their 60s and 70s are much more fearful of incontinence than impotence,” Brawley said. “When we talk to patients about the operation, that’s a big fear.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Lopatto in New York at elopatto@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 13, 2009 16:16 EDT