Treatment Options
Prostate cancer treatments range from a radical prostatectomy where your entire prostate is removed during surgery to non-invasive treatments that do not require a hospital stay or a surgical procedure.
Your doctor can recommend the treatment that best suits your needs and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each one.
While advanced cases of cancer (situations where the cancer has grown beyond the prostate gland) require more aggressive treatments like surgery and radiotherapy, cancers that are confined to the gland itself present more treatment options; and options with fewer and less radical side effects.
Brachytherapy
Brachytherapy is a treatment that utilizes the benefits of radiation therapy but typically has fewer of the unpleasant side effects. Unlike external beam radiation where a radioactive source is used to burn away cancerous cells, Brachytherapy uses small radioactive seeds to target small areas of the prostate. Approximately forty injections are used to implant the seeds directly into the gland. The small size of the seeds limits the exposure of the radioactivity to the tissue immediately surrounding the seeds.
While effective, this procedure is painful and so requires general anesthesia for about 2 to 3 hours. In addition, cancerous cells have been known to return after treatment.
Cryotherapy
Cryotherapy is where your prostate is frozen and then thawed. The freezing of the tissue has the effect of destroying the tissue thereby eradicating the diseased cells within the prostate.
As this description suggests, it is a complex procedure that requires an overnight stay in hospital and a general anesthetic for a few hours.
While this technology has improved in recent years, side effects like impotence, urinary incontinence and holes opening between the prostate and the rectum can occur.
Hormone Therapy
Hormone therapies are often prescribed for men with cancer extending beyond the prostate gland. While it cannot destroy or cure the cancer, it alters the level of testosterone to control the cancer’s growth. Most men will develop a resistance to the effectiveness of the hormones after about 2 years. This treatment is therefore a temporary solution used mostly to slow a cancerous growth or to improve a patient’s lifestyle.
High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU)
Ultrasound waves can be used to destroy cancerous cells in the prostate.
Guided by an MRI, a focused beam of ultrasound is aimed at regions of the prostate where cancer has been found. The affected area of the ultrasound pulse is very small. It can therefore be used to target a small mass of diseased tissue without affecting the surrounding healthy tissue.
This targeted destruction of the cancerous cells is repeated until all of them are eradicated. To treat the entire prostate takes about 2 to 3 hours on an outpatient basis. Cure rates are similar to surgery or radiation, but with fewer significant side effects and no reduction in quality of life.
Repeat Treatments
The HIFU procedure has been proven to allow for repeat treatments in the event that not all the cancerous cells have been destroyed. It has also been proven effective as a mopping up procedure after other treatments, including external beam radiation therapy.
Of the prostate cancer treatment options, HIFU is proven as one with fewer side effects and a cure rate in excess of 90%.