Treating Your Prostate Cancer: Know Your Options
When you go to the doctor for your annual exam and your recommended screenings, you never expect to learn that you have prostate cancer. However, prostate cancer screenings are so necessary because approximately 15 percent of men in the United States will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis at some point in their lifetimes. Receiving the diagnosis may be a shock to your system, but you cannot let it discourage you. Instead, you should explore the methods used to treat prostate cancer so that you can get started with your treatments as soon as possible.
Surgery
Surgery is perhaps the most commonly used means of treating prostate cancer. While there are different methods and approaches to prostate cancer surgery, doctors most often elect to remove the entire prostate gland as well as surrounding tissue including seminal vesicles.
The removal of the entire prostate is so common because it is often difficult to determine which parts of the prostate are cancerous and which are not. As such, partial removal or the removal of specific lumps on the prostate could leave cancer cells in the body, causing you many future problems.
Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy is a prostate cancer treatment that is often used along with surgery to prevent cancer recurrence in the prostate area, instead of surgery for cases that are in the early stages, or to treat advanced prostate cancer that has spread outside of the prostate tissues. This treatment method uses radiation rays to kill the cancer cells in the body.
This can be done using a machine outside of the body to beam radiation into a specific area of your body (the prostate). External beam radiation therapy is the common name for this procedure, and it requires that the prostate cancer patient attend treatment sessions several days a week for at least a month or sometimes longer.
Because these frequent treatments can be inconvenient to patients, some doctors elect to treat prostate cancer using internal radiation therapy techniques known as brachytherapy. In this case, radioactive pellets are placed strategically in the prostate to shrink cancer cells. Because this treatment means that the prostate is not removed, it is used almost exclusively for patients in the early stages of prostate cancer.
Other Prostate Cancer Treatments
While surgery and radiation therapy are the most commonly used prostate cancer treatments, others may be employed as well. Chemotherapy is a treatment option used when a person's prostate cancer has spread well beyond the prostate or urinary tract area.
In these cases, radiation therapy will not be sufficient to address the cancer cells in other parts of the body, and because chemotherapy is designed to attack all rapidly growing cells (cancer cells) in the body, it will be more effective. Other less common treatment options include hormone therapy and vaccine therapies, though they are only used if specific criteria are met.
Now that you know more about the prostate cancer treatment options available to you, you should schedule your appointment with the oncologist as soon as possible. The sooner you figure out a treatment plan, the sooner you can beat your prostate cancer and move on with your life.