This is an informative video that would benefit the newly diagnosed prostate cancer patient.
It talks about some of the more recent advances in radiation therapies that really should be considered when making a treatment decision.
Tag: Radiation
Long-term benefit of radiotherapy confirmed in advanced prostate cancer
This showed up in my inbox and I found it interesting.
It appears to be focused on initial treatment rather than a salvage setting, and showed that even for those newly diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer that had already spread, there was benefit to radiating the prostate:
“The initial 2018 findings of this arm of the STAMPEDE trial were slightly surprising. Previous thinking was that if the cancer had spread then the horse had bolted and there was no point in shutting the stable door by treating the original disease site. These long-term results have confirmed that this is not the case, and by treating the original site after the disease has spread, some men with prostate cancer lived longer than those on hormonal therapy alone. This could potentially benefit people with other cancers that have spread to other parts of the body too.”
Professor Nick James, Professor of Prostate and Bladder Cancer Research at the ICR, and Chief Investigator of the STAMPEDE trial
Here is the link to the original article:
Long-term benefit of radiotherapy confirmed in advanced prostate cancer
Watch “The Pros and Cons of Proton Therapy | Mark Scholz, MD | PCRI” on YouTube
For those exploring radiation therapy options, here’s an informative video about proton therapy.
Common Steroid Could Improve Prostate Cancer Radiotherapy Outcomes
A link to this article showed up in one of my prostate cancer newsletters that I receive. There’s a link to the original study report in the article, and it’s way over this layman’s head to make heads or tails of it in a brief read-through before my zapping session.
I didn’t dig deep enough to see if this applies equally to primary radiation therapy and salvage radiation therapy (because it’s not yet approved for use and too late for me).
A new study suggests that unwanted side effects of radiation treatments for prostate cancer could be reduced by the common steroid betamethasone.
Source: Common Steroid Could Improve Prostate Cancer Radiotherapy Outcomes
Dr. Kwon Video – Part 2
Here’s the second part of Dr. Kwon’s video. Like the first video, it’s very informative (perhaps even more so, at least for me).
Even though I had seen similar statistics before, one of the kickers for me is that only 33% of recurrent cancer is found in the prostate bed (local); 45% will be metastatic; and 22% will be both local and metastatic. As Dr. Kwon rightly points out, knowing where the cancer is located will guide your treatment decisions, and that’s why I have been so reluctant to blindly step into salvage radiation therapy without having first identified the location of the cancer. Why risk the possible toxic side effects of radiation if you’re not radiating in the correct location?
In my previous post, I mentioned that Dr. Kwon was a pioneer in dealing with oligometastatic prostate cancer. At the beginning, many in the profession dismissed his work out of hand (I’ll admit I was skeptical, too), but it seems that over the last 10 years, his work has gained the respect of others and is supported by further research.
In any case, this video is 31 minutes long and I encourage you to watch it.
Dan's Journey through Prostate Cancer 