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Radiation with pacemaker

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Prostate Cancer
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Posted 10/14/2024 9:04 PM (GMT -5)
I'm on a pacemaker forum. There's a person with a pacemaker that is wanting to have radiation for prostate cancer. He wants to know if the radiation treatment will be a problem with his pacemaker. Has anyone had radiation with a pacemaker?
Thanks for any input.
Posted 10/15/2024 12:19 AM (GMT -5)
The answer online, states that his heart doctor needs to be involved. Radiation regardless of where it is located can have an effect on some pacemakers. The heart doctor needs to tell the RO what type of pacemaker the individual has. The pacemaker has to be monitored during the procedure. I don’t have a pacemaker, but I thought the question was interesting enough to look online.
Posted 10/15/2024 7:41 AM (GMT -5)
Likewise, always wonder about things like that. RO’s should be up on that as it is a typical concern and there is risk to the device with excessive exposure.

However, the prostate is about as far away from a pacemaker as a cancer can be so I doubt there is much risk with RT to prostate. Lung cancer is another story obviously but a simple calculation would show the amount of radiation that the pacemaker would experience and manufacturers have recommended limits for this.
Posted 10/15/2024 10:15 AM (GMT -5)
I had SBRT for PCa in 2016. Prior to that time, I had a pacemaker, which was replaced some months before the radiation treatment. The electrophysiologist (pacemaker doc) was OK with radiation, but they wanted to do a check/interrogation of the device before my first radiation treatment and again after the last. There were no issues with the device at all.

I did make sure my RO was aware of my pacemaker before treatment planning, so they may have altered the treatment/targeting plan to accommodate the device, but nothing special had to be done to "protect" it.
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