Impotence and incontinence are frequently the unfortunate consequences of prostate cancer treatment that typically involves radiotherapy and surgery. This is because there are chances that the healthy tissue adjoining the tumor could also become damaged in the process of attacking the tumor and many patients fear the treatment because of this.
Now however a new kind of radiotherapy for treating prostate cancer could offer better options to cancer sufferers since it could help lessen chances of having incontinence and impotence.
This is “High dose radiation brachytherapy” that involves having a tiny radioactive ‘seed’ inserted via a needle close to the tumor to kill it.
The seed being inserted so close to the tumor means that there is very little chance of there being any damage caused to the adjoining tissues and therefore lesser chances of there being damage to them.
To make sure that the treatment was complete and there was no danger of any remnants of the cancer, this was followed up by conventional radio therapy.
However the duration of the radio therapy is far less than conventional radio therapy – owing to this, the risks of side effects were lower than they would be with conventional radiotherapy.
