IMRT

Has anyone been treated with IMRT radiation. How successful, and how is life post treatment?

Hi can you put in more imformation like what if you had or no had treatment whats your PSA, have you had a biopsy  is your cancer advance or not are you on alterative suplements and what your taking etc cheers Ray

PSA= 5.6, 6.1 then 5.1 Gleason score: Urologist=3+4=7, Oncological radiologist called it 4+4=8 T1c. Bone scan clear. I have not started treatment. They want 2 months ADT, then radiation, or possibly robot lap Mike

I was also a Gleason 8; PSA went from 11 to 14 to 17 over a period of a couple of months.  I also considered the robotic assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy but found out I was not a candidate due to a hernia repair I'd had a couple of years earlier, so I went the IMRT route.  I would have opted for surgery otherwise, except there was a 3 month waiting list at nearby branch at Cleveland Clinic, and at the rate PSA was rising, I figured it would be 25-30 in 3 months!  The surgeon also did not want me on hormone treatment prior to surgery, as it evidently makes it harder to find the cancer and be sure they get it all.  I didn't want to wait that long before starting treatment.

Be advised that IMRT will kill the nerves and leave you impotent, at least in my experience to date anyway, so you might have a better shot at avoiding that with surgery. I don't think folks are very upfront about that.  However with a Gleason 8, I was told by the surgeon that there was a good chance the cancer was already in the nerves anyway, so he wasn't very confident that he could save them. 

 I was fortunate to find an outstanding IMRT outfit just a couple of miles away and results to date have been excellent.  Started hormone therapy 1 month before starting radiation, followed by about 8 weeks of daily radiation treatment. PSA dropped from 17 to 1.0 after 1 month on Eligard; had dropped to <0.1 at end of treatment last August and was still there as of yesterday.  They implanted 4 gold tracking seeds in prostate, and then at the start of each daily treatment, they took about 3 different x-ray shots that their software used to determine exactly where the gland was for that particular day.  It then calculated adjustments needed to the table you're laying on, so technician would come back in the room and tweak the table location in 1 mm increments. Side effects were minimal; started taking a daily Immodium about 2 weeks into treatment to avoid diareaha but stopped that at end of treatement. 

A medical oncologist I consulted said that his experience was that results from surgery and IMRT are about the same if you use the latest state of the art radiation procedures.

 

With simultaneous hormone ablation, radiation treatment will take the psr to a very low nadir, as oppossed to radiation therapy alone, where the time to reach nadir psa is relatively long (and can be quite a "ride") and where nadir psa usually is never totally "zero." So even though hormone therapy does help to shrink the prostate so that radiation can be more thorough, it does have a psychological benefit, too (we all like to start out as low as possible).

 

One other thing: In being frank, my urologist said that whatever primary treatment you get, you should expect to be subsequently impotent. If by some flip of the coin you remain potent, than you should thank God. All the stats in the world will not make one feel better if he is impotent after   primary therapy because the surgeon or radiologist gave some false hope based on statistics. Of course there are nerve sparing techniques...but at what cost?

With all due respect to you Urologist that is not the case with me. I had external beam radiation, 3D, proton.and 3 and half years I am not impotent. In fact, 6 months after treatment I had sex 20 times in a week. I did take a supplement to help the healthy tissue, called VitalzmX. Or maybe because my girlfriend is 21 years younger than me and a stoned Fox. Everyone is different and the skill of the doctor is important.

Dan

As far as as the effectiveness of the treatment it failed in 9 months. I have advanced prostate cancer, intial PSA 23.5, gleason 7 or 8, stage T2C today I treat it with alternative treatment. It has been effective for almost 3 years.

Dan

With what I know today I wouldn't have any traditional treatment. the side effects are too nasty to live with, especially hormone treatment. When you are chemically castratred it causes all sorts of problems, impotence, bone loss, hot flashes, weight gain around the midsection, loss of muscle mass, weakness etc. Thank god it only lastd 6 months. It was the worse 6 months of my life. But everyone is different, I am sure the doctors on this site will point that out to you. If you would like more information you can visit my web site at www.alternativeprostatecancer.com

Dan

 

hi Dan mate You and I both use holistic cancer treatment but in deferent ways, though this works for us because our research showed it worked but for a lot of men just going though prostrate cancer they find they are under a lot pressure not only from there doctors and there family but from the effect the pain of the cancer is having on there own bodies.

 

 I know unlike you I never had any conventional therapy, and you have told me not only did it not help you, but its damage your body along the way.  I also feel. that  you like me do not want to put other patients though what we went though. Were the only road They could go down, was the so called conventional therapy road. For a grate number of patients, this is all they could find. You and I have both been told,  the promise by there doctors that it will be all over soon, you and I both know this doesn’t happen, be course, once you start fighting cancer, your always fighting cancer.

 Ive talk to a lot of doctors I believe they believe that all the doctor can do is give there patient a few more years. While the cancer recovers enough to have and other go at them. Doctors and patient both  fear that next time the chemo wont work, because the cancer got use to it. Or the radiation can’t be use again on the same spot. 

 

 I’ve ask a few doctors why don’t you tell patient there bodies have been producing cancer cell from the day they were concaved, that when there bodies cancer defenders get over whelmed with cancer cells that when they get cancer tumors. My doctor told me. that  doctors fight cancer tumors not cancer cells, there goal is to help the patient as best they can, to me, cancer cell are a natural part of life,

 

 I know that doctor deals with stats on how many patient die from there cancer in a set time but also stats on how many live. As well as stats on how many die long after treatment. I think  there is a belief in doctor and patient that when a patents gets cancer there life is shortened and all medicine  can do is give them just a few more years  to live qualitatively then to have palliative care later. Remember analyses of qualitatively and quantitatively nursing care practices. but I think on the holistic cancer treatment were on we can only win win win I feel now qualitatively we will  live for a lot longer and have a better life then we would have had continuing on conventional therapy alone. take care Ray