Which Is The Optimum Prostate Cancer Treatment?
This question troubles millions of individuals worldwide each year. Although prostate cancer can only have an effect on men, any significant, life-threatening disease affects not merely the sufferer, but also his family and friends. Doctors and surgeons also ask themselves what the best prostate cancer treatment is each week.
In this article, we will endeavour to give you some food for thought on the issue so that you may do more research on the Internet later or have some questions prepared to ask your medical doctor.
It is better to be able to comprehend the terminology and have some basic notion of what the disease is than to be completely unaware.
Having said that, you should not use this piece of around five hundred words to base your medical judgments on. This article is just meant as a stimulus for further research.
The first thing to consider is the general health of the patient and the phase of development of the cancer. These two issues will determine which treatment is most suitable. The vital thing with prostate cancer is to catch it very early on because it spreads so rapidly compared with most other cancers and spreads early.
If you have been having frequent check-ups and the cancer has been diagnosed early, your medical doctor may make a decision that he wants to ‘wait and see’. This can be distressing for the patient as the patient expects cancer to be taken on instantly.
Nonetheless, if the cancer is in an early stage, it can be better to monitor its speed of development before deciding what to do about it After all, you do not want to go through undue treatments, only to have to be treated again afterwards.
if you are worried about waiting or the treatment suggested (or combination of treatments), go for a second opinion. You will not offend your doctor by doing this, in fact, it relieves him of some responsibility, so he will almost certainly be happy of it.
If the cancer is still small, hormonal treatment might become recommended. Male hormones are partially responsible for the speed of growth of prostate cancer, so if you reduce or cut off these hormones (testosterone in particular), the rate of growth of the cancer ought to slow down.
It might become possible to do this with medication or surgery might be necessary. This will mean castration either chemical or surgical. Both sound extreme, but it might mean less side effects.
Again, if the cancer is small, they may decide to strive to kill it with external radiotherapy beams. These beams resemble X-Rays, but much less dangerous to healthy tissue. That is, they can be tightly focused on the cancerous cells, creating very little collateral harm.
If the cancer is spreading fast, the team may suggest cutting it out. This might involve a full or partial prostatectomy. This is why waiting and watching it might be a wise tactic in the beginning. You do not want radical surgery if it is not absolutely vital.
There are quite a few options for the treatment of prostate cancer and more than 80% of sufferers are cured, but it depends on those regular check ups to a great extent.
Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is currently involved with the proton prostate cancer treatment. If you want to kcurrently more go to What is the Treatment for Prostate Cancer?