What are the Cures for Localised Prostate Cancer???

For stage T1N0M0, T2N0M0 and many with T3aN0M0:

Surgery - Potentially curative

RT + HT - Potentially curative

Brachytherapy - Potentially curative

HIFU -This is not a cure and jury out on  long term effectiveness

Both radiotherapy and surgery have a cure rate of above 50%; possibly a lot above, as both have advanced in recent years, and cure stats are necessarily years behind the cures!

HIFU, even by its backers, is claimed simply to 'control' the cancer for an as-yet-undetermined number of years. There are no claims of cure.

Brachytherapy I honestly don't know, but probably with or not far behind surgery/RT. But that, I suspect, would assume HT. With EBRT, HT is essential, partly because the RT works over many months. Research has shown that 18 months is long enough for RT in most cases. My guess would be that BT would follow similar rules - but I stress I'm pretty ignorant about Brachytherapy.

I agree with Heinous. Surgery, external beam radiotherapy +HT, brachytherapy +HT, brachytherapy +external beam radiotherapy + HT all have similar outcomes. We rarely talk about cure but a certain percentage will still be cancer free after 10 years. 
The brachy, EBRT + HT has shown promise for stage 3 cancer I think.

All treatments have side effects and it is often up to us to choose which treatment we think will be best for our situation.

See link here Prostate cancer survival
 

Thank you & Ido4 for your replies, it has helped my understanding. I guess out of all of the treatments the HT is the one that concerns me the most and preferably I would like to choose a treatment plan without it

Having had three years of the stuff, I can relate to that!

All I would say in its defence is you do need to look at the long-term effects of all the options; PCa is a marathon not a sprint: as Ido4 explained, we rarely talk about cure, because the only way to know if you're cured is an autopsy; so a long remission is what we hope to achieve. But even in remission, we live with the long term effects of our chosen treatment, so look carefully at the risks and what you can live with.

This is a very useful document: The PCa Toolkit

Hi Robin

If it is localised with a gleeson of 7 and I presume a lowish PSA then surgery, RT, or Braccy can all produce similar outcomes so at the end of the day it could be a question of which treatment has the least side effects for you as they do vary .

Jury is still out on HI Fu but I have seen stats which put success rates up with the surgery and RT although not sure about long term stats, treatment probably not been around long enough.

I must admit it's a difficult choice, I was going for surgery initially but changed my my mind to RT as I was concerned about ED side effects although I know that not everyone has that issue.

Look carefully at side effects for each option before choosing

Best wishes

Steve

I'm 69 too. I had treatment for locally advanced prostate cancer T3b, in 2017.My Gleeson was 8 and PSA 48. I had hormone and radiotherapy. I'm in remission and I feel OK most of the time. Cheers,Mike 

I’m in an unfortunate cohort in that I’ve had surgery followed by salvage EBRT and HT. HT is manageable but life is much better without it! I found recovery after surgery was good but now dealing with double side effects. As has been said you will end up choosing the treatment you feel is most appropriate for you but no matter what course you take there will be side effects but hopefully they are manageable. The toolkit mentioned by Heinous is very useful and to be recommended.

Hi Steve 

Thanks for the reply. I see from your profile that you finished RT in 2017 and would be interested to know when you finished HT and how was it for you?

Trying to analyse the side effects of each treatment is so difficult, as you have the published effects with their percentages and then you have personal experiences.  I also think that people take to forums when they have issues and those with minimal side effects rarely get involved, so this skews it as well. For me, who likes to make rational decisions based on evidence it is near on impossible to make a choice.

Hello Robin P

I've had little success in finding statistics on outcomes. 

Could you possibly send me links for statistics on outcomes of a course of 39 radiotherapy treatments along with what will be for me a 2 year ADT course?

Many thanks.

Hi Stromness

There are some headline figures here for all treatments   but I think you will find more detailed info in the NICE guidance

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK544759/