Treatment
Many treatment options are available for prostate cancer, and new additional options are right around the corner.
You can beat prostate cancer. Nearly 100 percent of men diagnosed with prostate cancer are still alive after five years.
Talk with your primary care doctor, get to know your prognosis and understand your treatment options before choosing a course of action. Minimizing side effects and maintaining your quality of life are serious factors to consider. Your options may also include treatment still in the research phase, by participating in a clinical trial for experimental treatments and drugs.
Prostate cancer is usually slow growing, so unless your doctor tells you otherwise, you should have plenty of time to learn and consider your options.
Your doctor will help you put together a team of specialists and supporters. There are several types of treatment, and different specialists will often recommend different options, so it's important to know your doctors and get multiple opinions. It’s also important to know how much experience your surgeon has, before the treatment.
While we may not have all the answers to your burning questions regarding treatment decisions, we do have a comprehensive list of questions that you should ask your doctor and even ask yourself, to determine what is most important to you when evaluating your treatment options.
Treatment Options
It's important to keep in mind that every man is different and every case of prostate cancer is different. And there are a number of options for treating prostate cancer. No one method has proven to be more effective overall, and each treatment option has its pros and cons. The decision is yours, with the guidance of your medical team and the support of your loved ones.
For early or local prostate cancer that has not spread outside the prostate gland or nearby area, the most common treatment options are:
Prostate cancer can grow slowly and you may want to wait before jumping into receiving active treatment, depending on what stage you are in. Depending on your situation, deferring treatment for a while may be your best choice.
Surgery is the most common option for men under 70 with the cancer confined to the prostate. Surgeons will try to remove the cancer, including local lymph glands if necessary, while trying to spare the surrounding nerves and muscles that affect urinary continence and sexual functioning.
This treatment kills cancer cells either through external beam radiation therapy, by implanting tiny radioactive seeds through brachytherapy, or by radiosurgery.
Hormone therapy starves the cancer cells of testosterone by using drugs that inhibit testosterone production.
Chemotherapy is the use of powerful toxic drugs to attack cancer cells and are generally reserved for patients with advanced cases of cancer that have become resistant to hormone therapy.
Cancer immunotherapy is the use of the immune system to reject cancer. The main premise is stimulating the patient's immune system to attack the malignant cells in an effort to destroy them. Vaccines are medicines that boost the immune system’s natural ability to protect the body against disease.
Breaking News on Treatment
Mar 22, 2011
Huffington Post
Feb 23, 2011
Seeking Alpha
Exelixis (EXEL) presented updated results for its lead agent cabozantinib (also known as XL184 or “cabo”). Cabo had become a closely watched agent last year after demonstrating unique and unprecedented activity in prostate cancer patients, leading to either partial or complete resolution of bone scans in 19 out of 20 patients.
Feb 12, 2011
Pharmaceutical Business Review
Genta, a biopharmaceutical company with a diversified cancer product portfolio, has initiated a Phase II clinical of oral taxane tesetaxel in patients with advanced prostate cancer.
Oct 12, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
For men with advanced prostate cancer, the news for decades has been mostly bleak. Until recently, only two treatments had been shown to prolong survival.
