Thousands of people have already been battling their fight of cancer but families never get tired of looking for treatments for their loved ones. Treating cancer is a long shot especially when the cancer has already reached its serious stage. Every year, around 200,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in the United States alone and the number continues to grow every year. This makes cancer one of the most common cancers affecting men these days.
The treatments for prostate cancer depend on the results of the evaluation of the doctor as well as the body condition of the patient and age. The stage of the cancer also depends on what portion of the prostate gland is affected by the cells. Usually, very early stages of prostate cancer requires no treatment at all but the doctor just requires the patient to have regular check ups with the doctors to closely monitor the growth of the cancer cells. Prostate cancer also develops slowly in the gland thus, some men don’t need treatment at all until they grow old.
When the prostate cancer has already spread to a bigger portion of the gland, some treatments for prostate cancer are suggested by the doctor but of course, it still depends on the patient whether to follow the doctor’s advice or to ask for another opinion from another doctor. These treatments for prostate cancer would include Brachytherapy, chemotherapy and cryosurgery. Brachytherapy is usually suggested for younger patients whose cancer is localized and this therapy uses low or high dose of radiation to the prostate gland. For the chemotherapy, this is used when a considerable number of cancer cells are spreading through the gland. The main target of this therapy is to destroy the cancer cells through drugs by injecting it into the patient’s body part. Cyrosurgery is used for patients whose PSA level is below 10. This therapy uses needles to apply freezing gases to the prostate gland.
When the cancer cells have spread throughout the gland but haven’t affected the neighboring organs, the treatments for prostate cancer that are being suggested are prostatectomy which is a surgery that involves removal of the prostate gland; radiation therapy which is the use of high dose of radiation to kill cancer cells and robotic prostatectomy which is also similar to prostatectomy but involves the removal of the neighboring tissues that might have been affected by the cancer cells.
The worst part of the cancer however is when the cancer cells have been spreading through the other organs and start to complicate the body functions. In this case, the only treatment used is the hormone therapy which involves the use of hormones to control the growth of the cancer cells in the other parts. This is just to slow down the growth of the cancer cells but can’t eliminate them. This might not really destroy the cells but it has been proven that the hormones are effective to slow down the growth. It’s a long shot but it could be worth it.
