Read press release About radiotherapy for prostate cancer
This page tells you about radiotherapy for prostate cancer. There is information about
Radiotherapy to try to cure prostate cancer
Radiotherapy uses high energy waves to treat cancer. If your cancer has not spread, you can have radiotherapy to try to cure it. Radiotherapy to try to cure early prostate cancer can be external beam radiotherapy from a radiotherapy machine. Or it can be internal radiotherapy called brachytherapy, using small radioactive metal seeds that are left in the prostate gland.
Radiotherapy to treat prostate cancer that has spread
Radiotherapy can treat prostate cancer that has spread, for example to the bones. It can help to slow down the cancer growth in the treatment area and relieve symptoms.
Sometimes, doctors treat the whole body with internal radiotherapy to help control bone pain. You have an injection of a radioactive substance called strontium 89. The strontium 89 circulates throughout the body and is taken up by the cancer cells in the bone. It can destroy the cancer cells.
You can view and print the quick guides for all the pages in the Treating prostate cancer section.
Radiotherapy uses high energy waves to treat cancer. If your cancer has not spread beyond the prostate gland you can have radiotherapy to try to cure it. This is called radical radiotherapy. This type of treatment involves giving a high dose of radiation to the prostate gland. Radical radiotherapy is more likely to cure you if your cancer is found very early. In localised prostate cancer, radiotherapy gets rid of the cancer for good in about 2 out of 3 men (over 60%). If the cancer has started to spread outside the prostate gland it is less likely to be cured.
There are different ways of giving radiotherapy to try to cure prostate cancer. There is detailed information about both these types of treatment in this section. The main two ways of giving radiotherapy are
Radiotherapy is used in two main ways to treat more advanced prostate cancer. It can be used for
There is detailed information about radiotherapy to treat prostate cancer that has spread in this section.
Treating individual areas of spread
External radiotherapy is used to shrink secondary tumours and so control pain. It is mainly used to treat secondary cancer in the bones. The treatment works by killing off most of the cancer cells in the treated area. This makes the cancer shrink, and so relieves the pressure on nerves that causes pain. Secondary bone cancer also weakens the bones because the growing cancer cells destroy the bone. A bone affected by cancer is more likely to break (fracture), although this is rare in prostate cancer. After radiotherapy treatment, bone cells begin to replace the lost bone tissue. Then the bone gets stronger again and is less likely to fracture.
Treating the whole body to control pain
Treatment to control symptoms is called palliative radiotherapy. Sometimes a large area of the body is treated in one go with a lower dose of radiation from an external radiotherapy machine. This is called hemi body irradiation.
If several areas of bone are affected by cancer, an internal radiotherapy treatment with strontium 89 may be used. This is a radioactive liquid therapy (radio isotope) given by injection into a vein. The strontium 89 circulates throughout the body. It can destroy the areas of cancer cells in the bone. This type of treatment can help to control pain. It can also slow down the rate of growth of the cancer in the bones.
The radiotherapy section contains general information about radiotherapy, including
UK Prostate Link can also direct you to information about radiotherapy to treat prostate cancer.
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