Proton Therapy For Prostate Cancer Comes With Side Effects: Study

Thanks for posting the link Bob. It has been months since I checked in and it was interesting to see an article concerning radiation treatment. Just before I retired (mostly) we hired a fellow who had proton therappy as a primary treatment. When we discovered that we had both had PC and I had IMRT, he went out of is way on many occasions to tell me that I'd made a mistake having IMRT and that the proton thing he'd had was the way to go. It annoyed me at the time. I guess it wouldn't be nice to send him this link........though it might be satisfying. Naw........

Best

Yes GFB, an open mind is always a good thing.

The author of the article shows their ignorance by say "a pricey new treatment". As most who had researched this technology it's a pricey old treatment dating back to 1991 at Loma Linda University is SoCal. Still, however, after many many years of performing PBT on men LLU has never released study data on effectiveness nor SE's. So they themselves must have had a reason for that...

Tony

Hey, "Going for brachy" - another Delaware guy! Where/when are the support group meetings? Seen me an email.

...Jerry (who had PBT @ UFTPI about 2 years ago)

Somewhere, I remember reading that the records kept by Loma-Linda to support their claims that proton treatment was a superior form of treatment for PC were unusable by researchers trying to verify these claims..Negative events were somehow never recorded or had been purged for various reasons. This made an accurate evaluation of the treatment impossible..I also remember them saying that the technique used at Loma-Linda has changed considerably since they first started using proton treatment for prostate cancer which also makes comparisons difficult..

My Radiation Oncologist felt proton treatment had a place treating very small tumors located in hard to reach places. But when the beam was spread out to the size of a prostate gland, all sorts of problems developed that canceled out any benefit to the patient..The cost of installing a proton machine forces hospitals to try and keep them as busy as possible..That was his opinion...

Proton Therapy is an excellent tool to treat small targets like in the brain, specially for children. In case of children, they may have to be sedated so that they stay completely still during the treatment. This means that treating children by PT will take longer. So PT centers prefer to treat prostate cancer.

A very good friend had proton beam treatment in Jacksonville Fl in 2008 for a low grade Gleason 6 cancer.  By 2010 he was 75% impotent and could get only a partial erection with 100mg viagra.  He was 68 years old when he had the treatment done, but had no ED issuses what so ever prior to treatment. Now was it the proton or just his age that caused the ED, we will never know.  Unfortunately, he passed away this last Dec from luekemia after only being diagnosed in June.  Here is a perfect example where active survaliance would have been a better choice other then surgery.  

The protonbob article says "Don't believe what you read". Should I believe this article?