One common type of therapy today for localized prostate cancer is radiation therapy that uses high energy x rays to kill cancer cells. These x-rays can either be delivered using an outside radiation beam or perhaps by implanting radiation’ seeds’ into the prostate gland.
External beam radiation therapy treatments are usually offered on a daily basis five times a week (Monday to Friday) for anything up to about 6 or maybe 7 weeks and each treatment, Prostadine Reviews Webmd which is painless, lasts for just a couple minutes. (Such remedies are also generally given to patients whose cancer is no longer localized to the prostate gland but has spread into the pelvis and may also be used to alleviate pain and minimize tumors in situations of advanced prostate cancer.)
In instances where tumors are big it’s also typical to provide hormone treatment alongside radiation therapy in order to block the action of the male hormones which feed the development of prostate cancer tumors. Such hormonal treatments are usually continued for many months, or even years.
External beam radiation focuses on not just the prostate gland but additionally the seminal vesicles, to which prostate cancer can readily spread. In earlier styles of this particular treatment it had also been common to irradiate the pelvic lymph nodes though today this is simply completed in a minority of cases where evidence suggests that this’s required.
There are few immediate side effects to external beam light apart from fatigue and possibly diarrhea when light is used to the rectum, but both these soon pass once treatment is finished.
Longer-term affects include impotence which affects about forty % to fifty % of individuals. This particular figure is however declining with the launch of computer technology which now permits treatment to be tailored precisely on the structure of the individual with much more accurate targeting than has earlier been possible.
Turning to internal light therapy, this is a procedure where many tiny seeds are implanted straight into the prostate gland to deliver a high dose of light directly into the affected tissue.
Ultrasound is used to guide very thin needles from the perineum into the prostate gland to put the little seeds of iodine and palladium in a pattern which has previously been mapped using an extremely sophisticated computer program. The procedure, which usually takes about an hour, is carried through under local anesthetic and the patient is generally allowed home the very same day. One alternative approach is using more powerful temporary seed implants that are introduced over several days and possibly to mix this with low dose external light treatment. This procedure does however call for hospitalization.