Prostate cancer is a common disease that affects more than 3 million men in the United States. While prostate cancer isn’t always fatal, it can severely impact your quality of life. You may initially get used to some urinary symptoms of prostate cancer, but not looking for medical help is a mistake because this disease sometimes turns out to be very aggressive, and you need to run tests to see if you’re better off without treatment. Believe it or not, this is one of the only cancers with a treatment option that involves giving no medications. In this article, we will talk about this and other treatment approaches.
The most common treatment for prostate cancer is surgery, but other options include radiotherapy, hormone therapy, and chemotherapy. You also have watchful waiting and active surveillance, which are basically not giving treatment immediately and keep looking at how cancer behaves. But even in these cases, monitoring and close communication with your doctor are fundamental.
With that in mind, let’s start evaluating the most important treatment options for patients with prostate cancer.
What is prostate cancer, and what are treatment options for the disease?
Although prostate cancer is uncommon in men younger than 40, it’s the second most common cancer in men, after skin cancer. Prostate cancer occurs when cells within the prostate gland begin to multiply and grow uncontrollably. It may not cause any symptoms in the early stages, but over time, prostate cancer can cause impotence and urinary difficulties.
There are several treatment options for prostate cancer, including hormone therapy, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, active surveillance, and watchful waiting. The treatments available will depend on a patient’s specific situation, including age, overall health, type of cancer, and symptoms. Treatment will be tailored to the individual, and treatment side effects will depend on the type of treatment used.
Treatment of PC is generally based on the symptoms and signs of the disease and the cancer stage. Stages of PC include:
1) Stage 1 prostate cancer
In this stage, cancer is limited to the prostate. These patients can benefit from radical prostatectomy (a surgical procedure that involves taking out the prostate gland), radiotherapy with brachytherapy, or active surveillance, depending on the case.