New Trial Surgery vs. Radiation for HRPC

I had radiation nine years ago and have done well with no negative treatment side effects. Generally surgery results in mor negative treatment side effects due to the inherent physical damage from surgery.

You are looking to debulk and limit the PCa coming from the mother ship. While not yet proven to help it certainly makes sense. My suggestion is that you choose the method that is least invasive and generally leaves less significant negative treatment side effects. That is radiation treatment.

Welcome to HW, sorry you need to be here.

as to side effects and working. Surgery will put him out of action for 2-3 weeks. It would be 6-8 weeks before he could lift anything over 5 pounds.

With radiation you have to go in for daily treatments which can be a scheduling problem. I managed to work for most of my 6 weeks, but by the end fatigue got me bad and I had to take a few days off.

Andrew

I had 39 treatments (IMRT/IGRT) radiation therapy. It was a none event for me. The radiotherapy was 5 days a week for 8 weeks. I schedule it for the late afternoon. I would get up 4:30am in the morning, drive to work and on the way home I stopped off at the hospital's radiation oncology center. I was usually in and out within 15 to 20 minutes.

I had zero side effects, no urinary or gastrointestinal problems at all, and I never had to changed my diet what so ever. I was able continued working without any problems.

When I completed the entire regime, and during my exit exam with the radiation oncologist I honestly asked him if the beam was actually on since I had zero problems. His response was yes, and he said most men have zero or very little side effects from this therapy.

BTW, it has been almost 5 years since radiotherapy, and 7 years since prostatectomy and I still don't have any ED issues, and only slight stress incontinence when lifting heavy equipment.

I think there is something to the de-bulking theory. I'm glad a trial is underway to see if there is a worthwhile benefit.

Good luck to you!

Welcome to the Forum Jesse. Please keep us updated on how things go.

Good luck ahead!

Great that the decision has been made. Now you can prepare for it. Many of us have had radiation as primary treatment and can assist with our experiences.

Remember that this will be different than the men that had salvage radiation after surgery. In your case most all the radiation will be focussed on the prostate and thus the surrounding organs are little involved. Thus treatment side effects are generally diminished and dissipate within a few weeks after the last fraction.