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WASHINGTON, D.C. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Prostate cancer: it's the most common type of cancer among men. This year almost 200,000 will be diagnosed with it and About 30,000 thousand will die from it. Now a more targeted treatment is giving men choices and a better chance of beating the disease.
Fred Hallett has sailed the world. From the Azores to England, to Africa, Hallett spent ten months at sea on his sailboat fantasia As hard as it is to live every day on the open water, it was nothing compared to being told he had prostate cancer.
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"I was less scared in the ocean," Hallett recalled to Ivanhoe.
Georgetown University doctors are using the CyberKnife -- a more targeted approach -- to kill Hallett's prostate cancer. Four gold seeds are placed in the patient's prostate. Beams of radiation then target the seeds. If the prostate moves, the radiation beams move with it so other organs are not damaged.
"I call the pelvis the high rent district, Sean Collins, M.D., Ph.D., a radiation oncologist at
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., explained to Ivanhoe. "There's lots of important things in the pelvis and if you're missing the prostate, you're giving your rectum high does of radiation, which could cause rectal bleeding. If you're missing the prostate, you're giving high does of radiation to the bladder, which could cause bleeding from your bladder."
Other radiation treatments take much longer. Internal seed therapy takes three months. External radiation lasts 40 days. The CyberKnife cuts treatment down to five days.
"Prostate cancer is a cancer of 10 or 20 years, so we won't know how good the results are for that long, but we're not willing to wait because we have the best radiation technology in the world," Dr. Collins said. "I'm not willing to wait 20 years to give this opportunity to men."
A PSA blood test can detect your risk of the disease. A score of four or higher could mean prostate cancer. As for Hallett, his PSA score is down from 9.3 to two and he's ready to get back to his adventures at sea.
Prime candidates are patients whose cancer is confined to the prostate and has a PSA of 20 or less. Side effects of CyberKnife are the same as any form of radiation treatment, which include urinary and bowel frequency, rectal bleeding and loss of erections, but erectile dysfunction is lower with the new treatment.
For additional research on this article, click here.
To read Ivanhoe's full-length interview with Dr. Collins, click here.
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If this story or any other Ivanhoe story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Melissa Medalie at mmedalie@ivanhoe.com.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
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