Your doctor just told you that you have prostate cancer, and it immediately catapults you into a club no one wants to join.
Yet one in eight men will unwillingly become a part of this club in his lifetime. In fact, the American Cancer Society estimates there will be 313,780 new cases of prostate cancer this year alone.
The question becomes: What do you do now?
The experts at the CyberKnife Center of Miami, the premiere CyberKnife center in South Florida for treating prostate cancer with radiation, want you to know that most prostate cancers can be treated with high rates of success. And you’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to your treatment.
Prostate Cancer Treatment Decision Factors
The Prostate Cancer Foundation, says how you decide on the treatment you choose depends on many different things.
Those include your genetics, family history of prostate cancer, stage and grade of your cancer, where you are in your desire to maintain your fertility, and the risk and benefits of each type of treatment you are considering.
It’s also also very important you choose a medical team that makes you feel comfortable and confident about your decision. You want the most experienced team you can find, because that can make a big difference in your treatment outcome.
After being diagnosed by your primary care physician, you should consider seeing a urologist if you don’t already have one. Also a urologic oncologist and a radiation oncologist to discuss the best treatment options for you.
Ultimately how you choose to treat your cancer is up to you. And keep in mind, it’s always worth doing your own research and getting a second opinion, rather than listening to what just one doctor tells you.
Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer? CyberKnife Miami Can Help
The American Cancer Society helps prostate cancer patients come up with a list of tough and through questions to ask your doctors. Including what is the best treatment option for my particular type of prostate cancer? What type do I have? What are the potential side effects of each treatment? If I’m younger when I’m diagnosed, or newly married in my 60’s, and physical intimacy important to me, then what’s the best treatment? If I want to have children, or more children, what treatment best fits my lifestyle? Carefully consider what your goals are in life. If you’re older and you don’t care about such things, you may chose a different treatment option.
Don’t be afraid to ask for in-depth explanations, and always do your own extensive research.
Here are some options to ask your doctors about. Watchful waiting, surgery, hormone therapy, ablation, immunotherapy or radiation. Each has its own risks and benefits.
For instance, active surveillance, which means monitoring the condition over time, may seem like a good option for those with low-risk, early-stage cancer. But in 50% of those cases, what may start as a low-risk cancer could become aggressive. Then you may be facing a harder to treat prostate cancer requiring more aggressive treatments, and have a greater risk of the cancer spreading.
Surgery has risks too including infection, erectile dysfunction and incontinence.
Radiation also has side effects. Yet depending on the type of radiation you choose; side effects can be mitigated.
That’s why it’s important to look at all radiation options, including CyberKnife – the most precise way to treat your prostate cancer with a lower risk of side effects and a 98% treatment success rate on early stages.
Prostate Cancer Treatment Miami
CyberKnife, a form of external beam stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), delivers high-doses of radiation directly to the tumor, leaving healthy tissue unharmed. Patients require many fewer treatments than with traditional radiation, and side effects can be minimized.
CyberKnife tracks a tumor in real time, and that’s a true advantage. This also minimizes the amount of healthy tissue exposed to radiation.
“Years of mounting research is proving CyberKnife to be the gold standard for treating prostate cancer, and as more men learn about CyberKnife, it is becoming the number one treatment of choice,” says Dr. Mark Pomper, board-certified radiation oncologist and medical director of CyberKnife Miami. “CyberKnife for prostate cancer treatment has distinct benefits as far as treatment options go.”
- CyberKnife treatments can be done in five radiation therapy sessions over 10 days compared to 42 over three months with other types of radiation treatments.
- The CyberKnife radiation beams, which target and destroy the tumor, are so precise that healthy tissue is left unharmed so there is a lower risk of side effects including impotence and incontinence.
- It’s noninvasive so there are no risks of infection or long periods of downtime like there is with surgery.
Other CyberKnife Benefits:
- Treatments are outpatient and last 30 to 60 minutes.
- Side effects most often are minimal and may include fatigue and nausea.
- Patients can be treated repeatedly with CyberKnife should the cancer come back.
- Plus CyberKnife can also be used for metastatic prostate cancer.
At the CyberKnife Center of Miami, we treat prostate cancer patients every day, and we will walk with you through your diagnosis and treatment journey. That’s one reason patients from around South Florida and the country turn to us for care.
If you would like to find out more about prostate cancer treatment with CyberKnife, call us at 305-279-2900 or go to our prostate cancer website now for more information.