Being diagnosed with prostate cancer for the first time will more than likely be traumatic for you and your loved ones, being diagnosed with recurrent prostate cancer can be devastating. Your doctor will prescribe a prostate cancer treatment plan that is designed to help you beat this disease. For those who have recurrent prostate cancer, there are many prostate cancer treatment that your physician may advise you to try.
Radiation Therapy
One prostate cancer treatment option is radiation therapy. This prostate cancer treatment includes the use of radiation of high energy from protons, neutrons, gamma rays and x-rays, as well as other sources to kill the cancerous cells and to shrink any existing tumors. There are two ways that radiation therapy can be administered as prostate cancer treatment. The first is from a machine that is located outside your body called external beam radiation therapy, or you may have material that is radioactive that is placed in your body near where the cancer is located. This is referred to as internal radiation therapy.
Hormone Therapy
Another prostate cancer treatment your doctor may employ is hormone therapy. This prostate cancer treatment will remove, block or add hormones. When you are suffering with recurrent prostate cancer, hormone therapy may aid in preventing the growth of the cancer. It is also used as a cancer treatment for breast cancer as well.
Prostatectomy
If you are not responding to conventional methods of prostate cancer treatment, your doctor may suggest that you have a prostatectomy. This is an operation that will remove some or all of the prostate. When you have a radical or total prostatectomy, the surgical team will remove the entire prostate gland as well as surrounding tissue.
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is a common prostate cancer treatment as well as a treatment for a host of other types of cancer. Chemotherapy can come with a lot of side effects and if this is the course of prostate cancer treatment your doctor recommends, you will learn about the possible side effects you may suffer with this treatment option. There may be other prostate cancer treatment other then those mentioned that your doctor will discuss at length with you.
Chemotherapy will destroy the cancer cells by interfering with their growth and reproduction. Chemotherapy can be performed either by administering drugs or by performing surgical operations. In some cases, it could be a combination of these two. Chemotherapy can in some cases be very effective the prostate cancer but will not cure it.
The known side-effects are chemotherapy are nausea, hair losses and mouth sores. A new technique called fractionated dose will diminish those side-effects.
Two common chemotherapy drugs are Mitoxantrone as well as Corticosteroids. The other drugs that are used for chemotherapy are rednisone, Paclitaxel and Docetaxel. The final brand which is becoming more and more popular is Estramustine.
Doctors will usually advice you to undergo a surgical operation. You will then be given some medications to take. Many studies have shown that this combination reduces the pains experienced by men to a great extent especially if the prostate cancer has spread to the bones. As explained before, the cancer will not totally disappear nor will you live longer.
Let us examine some other medications that are used and how they function:
Doxorubicin is an anti-tumor antibiotic which works by damaging the nuclei of cells.
Paclitaxel is a member of the Taxane group which functions by fastening the microtubules of cells and thus causing the cells to crumble during division.
Etoposide functions by slowing down the process of mitosis in cancerous cells.
Vinblastine is an antineoplastic which breaks apart cell division and is derived from the Madagascar periwinkle.
The use of chemotherapy in prostate cancer is still being studied and men who do have recourse to chemotherapy are strongly encouraged to discuss with their doctors about experimental trials.
Your oncologist will inform you of the benefits and drawbacks to of the different drugs described above. So do seek medical advice too and you would be in a better position to decide according to your own health and your personal values.
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