HealingWell
Search Close Search
☰

Where to Radiate

Support Forums
>
Prostate Cancer
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply
❬ ❬ Previous Thread |Next Thread ❭ ❭
Posted 1/24/2015 3:00 AM (GMT 0)
My friend who is just 5 yrs out from his RP has been told it's back and urologist want to start radiation.
My question is how do they know where to radiate ? I always thought microscopic cell can travel any
where in the body and there is actually no way of actually telling where the cells are.
tony w.
Posted 1/24/2015 3:13 AM (GMT 0)
Much ado about nothing, in my view! I have no comment on "they " which should tell you something about my opinion on "they"
Posted 1/24/2015 3:23 AM (GMT 0)
logoslidat
What a rude man ever heard if you have nothing to say shut up.
Sorry if we are all not as educated as you but THEY are his Urologist
I thought that would have been obvious even to you.
tony w.
Posted 1/24/2015 3:34 AM (GMT 0)
I was surprised when I went through it: common wisdom is that the greatest likelihood for a "cure" is to radiate the prostate bed (the vicinity of where the prostate was), operating on the assumption that the cancer locally escaped the prostate, even if there is no evidence to that effect. In my case, I had negative margins, which made it a bit less likely to be successful. And in my case, I believe it made a difference - my PSA dropped significantly afterward, and stayed low for several years. But, it appears now that I must have had some other cells located elsewhere. And that is the risk you take - that it may not be successful, and then you are stuck with the SE and the failure. But it is likely the last chance at a cure - and why many choose SRT.
Jeff
Posted 1/24/2015 4:01 AM (GMT 0)
Tony, that has been one reason I refuse to do SRT. To me it's a Hail Mary shot in the dark approach which I am not prepared to do. Spot radiation for a lesion on the bone? Would certainly consider. My opinion only, for my circumstances. I am not knocking other people's decision to do SRT!

Cheers, Doug
Posted 1/24/2015 4:03 AM (GMT 0)
Im_Patient
Thank you that was very helpful that is what a support group is you need help you ask
and hopefully get a reply like yours thank you.
tony w
Posted 1/24/2015 4:13 AM (GMT 0)
Wow, sorry about that, it certainly was not my intent to rile you. Forums and participants do get rambunctious at times. Again my apology, sincerely….
Posted 1/24/2015 5:24 AM (GMT 0)
Tony, you are very welcome!
All here provide great support - with what we all are going through, we sometimes get moody.
You get all points of view, so you are informed enough to make your own decision.

My first 2 years of the PCa journey were on my own, and I was very happy when I found this forum. I have gotten indispensable knowledge from it.
Jeff
Posted 1/24/2015 5:45 AM (GMT 0)
Tony,

Do you know your friend's Gleason Score and whether he had positive margins? The lower the Gleason score the more likely it is that a recurrence will be local -- that it will be in the tissue right next to where the prostate was cut out. Gleason 6 cancers don't do the loose-goose cells riding around in the blood stream thing. They can grow along the nerves and can grow through the prostate capsule but any cancer that was missed will usually stay put. If your friend had positive margins that is a good indicator if he recurs since it makes it more likely that his recurrence comes from some of the cancer that was outside of the surgical margin and got missed.

With higher-gleason cancers they radiate the places where it is likely to have gone first (like the pelvic lymph nodes) and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But it will often buy a guy more time.
Posted 1/24/2015 6:50 AM (GMT 0)
The reason the prostate fossa is the target for salvage radiation is because it’s almost always the first stop on the way out of the prostate for the cancer cells. As we've learned from biopsy studies, most of the time the cancerous tissue is in the area of the anastomosis — the prostate doesn't always come away cleanly when the surgeon is trying to spare the bladder neck, the urethral sphincter, and the neurovascular bundles. When there is a positive surgical margin or it is found to be stage T3, we know there is going to be some cancer in the fossa.

- Allen
Posted 1/24/2015 3:43 PM (GMT 0)
with your edit and spirited response{ no mr. in-between there}, I knew "They" was a a medico, but whether a GP,a local urologist, or RO or MO or surgeon,or a combination of all three was the question. My opinion of them based on the information in your initial post is IMO, there is a rush to judgement for SRT. As I'mpatient said, I was not so much moody as weary of seeing so much angst on this forum with psa levels that many would "live" for and I also feel early treatment skews studies as one would never know if they ever had any cancer there. You know you will not always get the answer you want on a forum. No one likes a "yes" person. and as we all know from our childhood "maybe" is an indeterminatent sentence.
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply