Posted 2/4/2018 7:35 PM (GMT 0)
Tuesday is my second treatment. So far I have had very few side effects. Perinium was sore for a week but I was able to play golf every day, starting the day after treatment. I had one day of high-frequency urination and the typical 2 days of urinary burning. I am told these symptoms might be a bit more intense after round two. I also had insomnia due to Flomax, and have stopped taking it.
My decision to do HDR BT is summarised nicely in this except
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3746400/
Future directions for high dose rate prostate brachytherapy
The radiobiological advantage of delivering a HDR per fraction to the prostate while sparing the rectum and bladder, together with the ability to make real-time adjustments to both source positioning and dwell times of the radioactive sources thereby allowing for optimal dose distribution, has led to interest in other indications in which HDR prostate brachytherapy might be applied. One of the main practical attractions of HDR over EBRT is the shorter treatment times, and thus more recent work has focused on HDR monotherapy. This has been predominantly applied for more favourable intermediate- and low-risk disease, in which LDR has been well established. Such treatment requires multiple fractions/implants, typically given over 2–3 days, with some centres also repeating the implant 1–2 weeks later. Thus, although the number of hospital visits is lower than with EBRT, they are more intense and require inpatient stay. While the results are not as mature as with HDR boost, monotherapy studies have reported freedom from biochemical relapse rates of 89–100% in low- and intermediate-risk patients, which compare favourably with findings with LDR brachytherapy [70-76]. At present this approach is not recommended routinely, but should the long-term outcome data become favourable, this will undoubtedly help to establish HDR monotherapy as a credible option for localised prostate patients.