Prostate Cancer Treatment Side Effects To Be Aware Of

Prostate cancer is the number one cancer affecting men in North Americi.Broj A risk factor is age. Prostate cancer is rare in men under age 50 years, while 80 percent of men older than 80 years of the contract the disease. The earlier you detect and get treatment, the better the healing. There are alternative treatments to traditional surgery and radiation options. All treatments carry the risk of side effects, some more significant than others. Know your options, including newer treatments with fewer significant side effects.

Traditional Treatments

surgery and external beam radiation are the most common treatment for men with prostate cancer.

operation

is an invasive surgery and requires a hospital stay. Surgical options are prostatectomy where the prostate is removed, the dissection of pelvic lymph nodes, where only the lymph nodes are removed or Transurethral resection resekcija.Transuretralna involves removing parts of the prostate through the urethra.

side effects of surgery are impotence and usually moderate to severe urinary incontinence.

Radiotherapy

External beam radiation therapy or the ER uses a radioactive source is directed at the pelvic region burn diseased cells. Although not an overnight hospital stay is required, it is implemented in a period of about 5 weeks. You would get this treatment on 5 consecutive days for 5 consecutive weeks on an out-patient basis. Side effects include impotence and a condition caused by a burned hole between the rectum and prostate.

Alternative treatments

range of treatments for prostate cancer today has expanded greatly in recent decades.

Brachytherapy benefits from radiotherapy, but limits the amount of tissue exposed to the implantation of radioactive pellets directly into the prostate. This process takes up to 3 hours. At that time the tiles are installed with a series of 40 injections. Since the effective range of radioactive sources is small, the amount of affected tissue can be tightly controlled. Cancer cells can emanate from these small sources and destroyed. This procedure is effective, but the cancer can come back as in the cases examined.

Cryotherapy uses cold to destroy cancer cells. While you put under general anesthesia, your prostate is frozen and then thawed. Radical changes in temperature used to kill cells in the prostate, thus destroying the cancer. While freezing the gland has been proven effective, side effects such as urinary incontinence, impotence and severe pain in the pelvic area can cause.

Hormonal therapy is usually prescribed by neizlječive.Cilj cancer hormone therapy is to change your level of testosterone and slow tumor growth. Unfortunately, most patients develop resistance to the hormone treatment after about 2 years and as a temporary measure.

Chemotherapy is often used to relieve pain after controlling tumor growth and to improve the quality of life. Again, this is not a cure.

Ablatherm HIFU

This treatment uses focused sound waves to heat and destroy prostate cancer cells. Where the nerve enters the prostate cancer is free, patients who received HIFU treatment reported impotence or sexual dysfunction, only 20% of the time,. Where the nerve is affected by cancer, impotence causes about 40% of patients treated with

Other side effects are mild urinary incontinence in 8% of patients, total urinary incontinence in 1% and narrowing of the urethra in 8% of patients.

After treatment, patients have reported temporary narrowing of the urethra for a few months, reduced sexual activity for several weeks thereafter, and a temporary inability to 12 months.

can be radical to some treatments and decreased in others. Talk to your doctor about which treatment best serves and explore all possibilities.