Prostate cancer is quite frequently met in men, especially the older ones, and sometimes it is not diagnosed at all during the person's life and only by accident after he dies if there is an autopsy. It grows very slowly but it can be fatal if discovered in the late stages of the disease. The best example is the famous actor Dennis Hopper who is dying from prostate cancer and because the cancer was diagnosed so late he can't be saved now by all the money and fame in the world. Any way, because of the small dimensions of the prostate and also because of its position in the human body, it is pretty difficult to get to it and perform surgery in order to remove the tumor, since surgery is usually the treatment of choice for almost all types of cancer.
The problem is that most prostate cancer patients are elderly and many of them can't support surgery because of age problems, respiratory or heart issues. So they want to have another option for the treatment and this option is radiotherapy. This kind of therapy is also chosen by the younger patients who do not want to lose their sexual function during surgery, as it frequently happens due to the fact that the nerves that are responsible for potence are very close to the prostate and can be cut during surgery. They, too, choose radiotherapy. But this is not a bad thing because radiotherapy has progressed a lot these days if compared to what it was like back in the 1917 when it was first used in USA. Now the procedure is a lot more precise and the quantity of radiation is a lot higher, so the whole duration of the radiation process is considerably shorter, somewhere between five to seven weeks, for five days a week.
This radiation process is in fact the bombarding of the prostate cancer tumour with intense beams of radiation, usually proton or neutron beams that are guided from the exterior to be as accurate as possible. These days the radiotherapists use some very high-tech 3D devices that allow them to be extremely accurate. These beams affect the DNA of the cancer cells and if the divide, they will die because they will not be able to repair themselves.
The guideline external beam radiation for prostate cancer specifies the xact dosage of radiation the doctors need to use every session in order to provide an efficient treatment but also prevent them from overexposing the patient to a too high dose that can harm him. The results obtained with this treatment for prostate cancer are very good because this tumour is not moving, it is very still and it allows the beams to be very precise, targeting only the cancer cells without affecting the healthy tissue around the tumour.
The prostate cancer patient is often veryconfused about the procedure and wants to know more about it. So if you want more information regarding this topic, here is a patient's guide, a Guideline external beam radiation for prostate cancer that explains in simple terms what you should do and what option you have.I think it's useful to read it if you have prostate cancer because this way you will know what to expect and you will understand the process better.