Less radiation for prostate cancer has even more side effects

Prostate cancer radiation scheme comes with even more side effects

Just a couple of weeks ago I told you about the newest and most convincing research to date about prostate cancer treatments.

Instead of surgery or radiation, this study found that “active surveillance” is the best way to go for most guys with early prostate cancer.

While most men will probably tell you that’s the best news they’ve heard in a long time, some doctors, especially ones who earn a living doing radiation, didn’t seem quite as excited.

So here’s what one group came up with. It’s called “hypofractionated radiation,” and instead of getting 45 sessions over nine weeks, you get just 28 blasts of radiation in only six weeks.

You’re going to hear it’s “a very reasonable and viable option.”

But is that really a better deal? Let’s read the fine print.

And then get ready to run for the hills.

Prostate payday

Until just a few years ago, low-grade prostate cancers might be carved up with surgery, laced with chemo, then hit with a few dozen shots of radiation, just to be on the safe side.

As we now know, that was a painful overkill.

A low-grade, slow-growing prostate cancer will probably never cause you any problems or spread somewhere else in your body. It’s the slacker dude of cancers. And as patients are catching on to this, radiologists are seeing their profits plummet.

So some researchers at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital dreamed up this idea. They enlisted 1,092 men with low-risk prostate cancer. These were guys who were perfect candidates for active surveillance.

But instead, here’s what they got:

Half the men received standard radiation treatments of 40-45 sessions over eight or nine weeks. The other half got 28 higher-dose sessions over five or six weeks.

In the press release the researchers issued, they boasted that the “quality of life” was “essentially the same” for both groups of patients. And they’re no doubt hoping that goes right over the heads of most of the poor guys they’re trying to rope into this idea.

Because what that really means is it doesn’t seem to matter if you get radiated 45 times or 28 — the risks are still the same. Either way, only a few lucky guys still had a sex life and didn’t have to wear adult diapers after the treatments.

Oh, and there was one more little detail.

Researchers report that the “only difference” was a small, “but significantly larger decline in bowel quality of life” for one group of men.

They didn’t say exactly what “decline in bowel quality of life” means, and I don’t think I really want to know. But what we do know is that this happened to the patients who received the so-called convenience of fewer radiation sessions. The researchers said that this little side effect was not “clinically meaningful.”

I’ll bet if it was their “bowel quality” it darn well would be meaningful!

So why would this group have worse outcomes? One reason may be that in each session, they got blasted with higher doses of radiation than the men who got the standard long-term therapy.

In other words, this study was a flat-out failure and yet, it’s getting hyped as a breakthrough!

For guys that have been diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer, it may be hard to see the forest for the trees.

But if this new study does anything, it confirms what I told you just a few weeks ago: if your doctor is pushing you towards any kind of radiation, short, long or in-between, it’s time to get another opinion.

Or maybe even another doctor.

Sources:
“Less radiation OK in low-risk prostate cancer: Study” Charlotte Libov, September 27, 2016, Newsmax, newsmax.com