Prostate Cancer And Proton Therapy

When prostrate cancer strikes, the first thing one has to do is sit down and look at the many possible lines of treatment and which one will work best depending on the diagnosis of what stage the prostrate cancer has got to. Mot people look at a whole lot of options before radiation treatment is resorted to and perhaps they come to it so late and this is why radiation has such a high mortality rate. All said and done, however, radiation is the least invasive of all the options available. This makes it likely to have the least amount of complications.

What you need to know about radiation therapy are the side effects. Like most of the other treatments, there is the risk of infertility, incontinence and impotence. The skin, too, tends to get affected and many experience epithelial damage at the point where the radiation strikes the skin. Not just this, there is also the risk of the surrounding tissue getting damaged and this could be a big risk if the organs are affected. Very often, the gonads are affected and this in fact is what causes infertility. It is all these problems that make radiation really a last choice.

Proton treatment on the other hand, has very few of these side effect problems. What makes it better than radiation treatment is the precision of its delivery. This, too, involves radiation but unlike conventional radiation treatment where there does seem to be a damaging of the surrounding areas, this therapy is precise in its application. It goes directly to the place where it should and nothing in the surrounding areas falls prey to the dangers of radiation. So what proton therapy assures you is all the goodness of radiation treatment without many of the problems that follow.

Proton therapy is of special significance when you are suffering from prostrate cancer in its early stages. This really is the best way to destroy all those cancer cells without resorting to surgery. However, it has been noticed that proton therapy is usually done as a kind of a palliative measure and it has helped even in cancer that is in the later stages. In which case, you will find that proton therapy is usually combined with other forms of treatment like surgery, chemotherapy or hormone treatment.

What proton therapy really does is to localize treatment. This is very welcome at a time when treatments come with the ensuing problems of bad side effects. Infertility, incontinence and impotence can really be major problems in life after prostrate cancer treatment. With this therapy there are far fewer side effects all thanks to the beam being so precise so as to cause the absolute minimal damage to the surrounding areas. The range and the peak of the beam can be monitored extremely well so that means that even tissues that lie deeper can be burned off very precisely, without having to go in for any invasive surgery. The only possible drawback is that this therapy is very expensive as it uses very expensive equipment. It is not that this therapy doesn't have side effects like the regular radiation therapy, just that the rate is so much lower.