How Can
Radiotherapy Help With Prostate Cancer?
Radiotherapy is
perhaps one of the longest standing known treatments for various
forms of cancer across the spectrum of the disease all over the
world. Discovered late in the 19th century by German Wilhelm Konrad
Rontgen, it was already in use for medical purposes by the turn of
the century, and today, there are constantly newer and newer
applications for the radiation in medicine, and it remains one of
the favorite options for cancer treatment.
Specifically,
doctors prescribe treatment for prostate cancer patients based on
the apparent aggression of the carcinoma, the stage of its growth,
whether or not it has metastasized, the age of the patient, and his
general health. Naturally, the purpose of treatment is to eliminate
all of the cancer, or at the very least, as much of it as possible.
For this reason, they aim to catch a patient’s prostate cancer in
its earliest stage for if the malignancy is at a very advanced
stage, the purpose of the treatment may only be palliative for the
most part, intended toward making the patient as comfortable as
possible for as long as they can manage.
Therapeutic
radiology in particular (or radiation therapy, or radiotherapy)
makes use of high-energy particles or waves (x-rays or gamma rays)
to focus damaging radiation on the region of a prostate tumor with
the intent of inflicting as much genetic damage on the tumor as
possible. The radiation often causes damage to most of the cells in
its path, meaning that it is harmful even to healthy cells in the
human body. However, even though this same radiation therapy kills
cancerous cells, it only damages healthy cells such that they are
able to reproduce quickly.
As a consequence of the damage, though, there are side effects to
radiation treatment for prostate cancer, and indeed various other
forms of cancer.
The
patient will tend to experience such symptoms as fatigue, skin
changes, and loss of appetite, and radiation proctitis, which may
result in diarrhea and mild rectal bleeding. Other side effects may
be related specifically to the areas that are being treated, which
in case of prostate cancer might be fecal and urinary incontinence,
including the milder hair loss and a decrease in the number of white
blood cells. The upside of this is that most of the side effects of
radiation treatment for prostate cancer are short-lived because the
healthy tissues recover from radiation much more efficiently, and
the patient’s health is restored.
Generally,
prostate cancer treatments may be administered alone or in various
combinations with one another. Radiation therapy in particular is
often an alternative to surgery in many cases. One form, external
radiation therapy, beams radiation from a machine onto the body; a
second application (brachytherapy) applies internal radiation
therapy through radioactive material sealed in “seeds” inserted into
the prostate.
Radiotherapy may
also be employed for later stages of prostate cancer, but often
simultaneously with chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or prostatectomy;
or one after the other.
Portugal,
Lisbon,
Bulgaria, Sofia,
Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou,
Burundi, Bujumbura,
Tamworth Australia
Canada, Ottawa, Ontario,
Cambodia, Phnom Penh,
Stamford Connecticut USA
Italy, Rome,
Darwin Northern Territory Australia
Whole Body
Detoxification Products
Balanced Health Today
355 Hukililke Street ( suite 206)
Kahului, Hi 96732
//www.BalancedHealthToday.com
info@BalancedHealthToday.com
888.449.0552