Prostate Cancer Treatment

Prostate cancer treatment options vary by stage of the disease. The age, overall health and whether the cancer is recurrent or first time will be a deciding factor on what treatment option your doctor may choose for you.

There are several treatments for prostate cancer available. Some are used alone and other treatments may be used in conjunction with another.

Prostate Cancer Treatment Methods

Surgery Surgery is an option for many prostate cancer patients. A prostatectomy and lymphadenectomy are both surgeries used to treat prostate cancer.

Radiation Therapy Radiation therapy can be done internally or externally. It uses an x-ray like energy that kills cancer cells. Radiation therapy for prostate cancer treatment sometimes has side effects such as impotence.

Hormone Therapy Research tells us that certain hormones cause cancer and encourage tumors to grow. Hormone therapy can reduce production of these hormones or prevent them from working.

Watch and Wait Watching and waiting may seem unusual, but it's actually quite common. If you have very early stages of prostate cancer, the doctor may suggest watchful waiting for treatment. Watchful waiting is careful monitoring to see what changes occur. This type of prostate cancer treatment is also common for older men who have other health problems.

Future Prostate Cancer Treatments

There are several types of prostate cancer treatments that are now being tested in clinical trials. It makes take years for these types of treatment to be come available to the genreal public, but are definitely worth the wait. If you are interested in participating in a clinical trial, please visit Clinical Trial Participation. Types of treatment for prostate cancer in clinical trials include:

• cryosurgery (freezing of cancercous cells)
  
• chemotherapy
  
• Biologic therapy/immunotherapy (therapy that used the body's own immune system to fight cancer}
  

_Sources:

_{Adapted from the National Cancer Institute.}