A Look At The Importance Of Proton Cancer Treatment

Getting a cancer diagnosis is nothing if not a terrifying thing. It opens the door up for questions upon questions, and puts doubt into the very future of your life. Fortunately, there are treatment options available, treatment options that, depending on the stage of your cancer, can do everything from prolong your life to eradicate your cancer completely. But even deciding what treatment option to pursue can be challenging, as it is a world of unknowns. Fortunately, you are likely to have a highly trained, skilled, and experienced oncology doctor in your corner, helping you to figure out the ins and outs of your cancer treatment. Many doctors are likely to now recommend proton radiation therapy, as proton therapy for cancer has become more popular than ever before.

From treating prostate cancer to treating breast cancer, proton cancer treatment is often decided to be the superior choice over traditional radiation therapy. For one, proton therapy has been proven to be highly effective, targeting only the direct area in need of radiation. On top of this, proton radiation therapy actually helps to save many of the other organs from unnecessary damage as a side effect of the treatment, as is too often the case in traditional methods of radiation therapy. In fact, proton treatment will save the gastrointestinal system alone from as much as nearly sixty percent of the radiation that it would have been exposed to in the use of traditional methods of radiation treatment. The heart is also often spared, receiving no exposure to radiation at all during the course of treatment of proton radiation therapy. And the lungs too have a much reduced exposure, receiving, in typical cases, only half of the radiation exposure than they would had they been using a traditional method of radiation treatment.

And proton therapy has been used to treat a wide variety of cancers with much success, providing treatment for breast cancer as well as treatment options for prostate cancer. Treating prostate cancer with proton therapy has been shown to be particularly successful, as treating prostate cancer with proton therapy not only has great success rates, but leaves patients with a good quality of life once the course of treatment is completely over. For one, treating prostate cancer with proton therapy is more likely to leave patients in full remission – and even cure them – than not. For those who were diagnosed with low risk prostate cancer, the likelihood of being cancer free five years or more later after receiving proton treatment was at an astounding ninety nine percent. And treating prostate cancer with proton therapy is ideal for intermediate risk prostate cancer patients as well, more than ninety five percent of whom lived to see the next five years cancer free. And even high risk prostate cancer has seen success through treating prostate cancer with radiation therapy, as nearly three fourths (seventy four percent, to be more exact) achieved remission for at least five years after completing their course of proton cancer treatment (often in addition to other treatments such as chemotherapy, it must be noted).

On top of this amazing survival rate that we see when treating prostate cancer with proton therapy, we also find that proton cancer therapy allows patients with prostate cancer a much better quality of life when their course of treatment has been completed. This is because traditional radiation is very likely – more likely than not, as a matter of fact – to leave patients impotent thanks to the location of the cancer. But thanks to the targeted approach of proton radiation therapy, proton therapy for prostate cancer much reduces the risk of impotence as a long lasting complication of the treatment. In fact, very nearly ninety five percent of all men who undergo proton cancer treatment find that they are able to resume normal sexual activity once their treatment has been fully completed.

For many people with varying types of cancers in the United States as well as far beyond it, proton therapy has opened new doors of treatment options. For one, proton therapy has been found to be a successful treatment.