Prostate Cancer Treatment Options
When you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, there are a number of factors that will influence the prostate cancer treatment options available to you. These include your age, the progression of the cancer, and the stage the cancer has reached. For an explanation of prostate cancer staging please click here.
You may also decide against undergoing prostate cancer treatment due to the potential side effects. We’ll take a look at the possible side effects of each treatment option in separate posts.
Prostate Cancer Treatment 1: Watchful Waiting
Although this might not sound like a prostate cancer treatment, regular monitoring and testing to understand how the cancer is progressing is a viable option for many men.
Frequent assessments will tell you whether the cancer is likely to spread beyond the prostate at which point further action can be taken. This option is often taken by elderly men in the early stages of prostate cancer, where it is felt the cancer may not progress quickly enough to reduce their natural life span.
Prostate Cancer Treatment 2: Radical Prostatectomy
This prostate treatment is usually advised for younger men with localised or locally advanced cancers (stages T1-T4). It involves the surgical removal of the prostate gland which gets rid of all cancer cells in around 60% of cases. Find out more about the risks and side effects of radical prostatectomy here.
Prostate Cancer Treatment 3: Radiotherapy
Radiation kills cancer cells and when used in the early stages this prostate cancer treatment can eliminate cancer cells altogether. It can also slow the progress of advanced cancer and reduce symptoms.
Radiotherapy is usually given in regular short sessions over a period of about seven weeks.Read about the risks and side effects of radiotherapy here.
Brachytherapy is a type of radiotherapy where radioactive seeds are implanted into the tumour, which reduces the side effects.
While radiotherapy is a localised treatment, chemotherapy is a more wide ranging treatment used to treat cancers that have advanced further.
Prostate Cancer Treatment 4: Hormone Therapy
Hormones control cell growth in the prostate, and hormone therapy can block the effects of testosterone which is necessary for the cancer to grow. Hormone therapy is usually used alongside other forms of prostate cancer treatment.
We’ll post the side effects of these various treatments soon but in the mean time check out some facts about prostate cancer.
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