5 DAY Radiotherapy without HT coming soon?

Good news indeed for men who are diagnosed in future, but a bit of a blow to many who could have benefitted and are now having to live with the side effects of the only treatments that were available to them.

That's progress for you and as with anything else in life most of us can look back and envy those who are benefiting from things that were unavailable to us.

I hope that this will now be an option for you. Maybe if it isn't available at your hospital you could get it somewhere else. 

Hope you get the answer you're looking for.

This is exciting news. For anybody in the East Midlands, I was at a local prostate cancer support group where the university Hospitals Of Leicester oncology consultant was talking about this upcoming treatment. It sounded very much as if Leicester would be offering this but I’m not sure when it will start. 

I think to my husband’ s family history. His grandfather died in the 1960s of ‘prostate problems’, his father died in 2001 of prostate cancer (Trus biopsy , no scans)  having been diagnosed late and the only option was hormone treatment to gain an extra 2-3 years. My husband (T3a n0 m0) was diagnosed earlier after PSA monitoring MRI, template biopsy and bone scan. He had 20 radiotherapy and is taking HT. He’s also had genetic counselling etc. now this…… more hope for our sons?!

On the news item I saw the presenter asked the trial team leader how soon this could be offered mainstream and she replied that it could (and was?) being provided now and at '20 centres around the country'?

eg, They have already been ramping up the equipment and training and given the trial has been running since 2011, I'm guessing that would be the case.

I mean, the chances are they are replacing / upgrading this sort of kit all the time anyway and in principle, it's just a matter of turning the volume up and the time down and doing it for 1/5 of the times?

And let's face it, when they first developed the use of RT as a tool for such things, the kit was likely to be far less advanced and so they probably erred on the best compromise of treatment, risk and outcome. As the kit / understanding advances, there was bound to be a step change in the treatment to match the abilities of this new kit.

Just as we saw with robotic / v conventional 'hands-on' surgery or drugs that can now completely cure people of things that we previously killers.

The fact that treatment can be completed in a quarter of the conventional time will hopefully reduce the wait time  The man who was in the program who'd had the treatment 8 years ago and is still cancer free is very encouraging. 

Also, during the news item she said that because of the shorter time needed for this new treatment, they could see more people sooner / quicker (5x potentially)?

Yeah, and short of any known side effects (over the conventional) there is no reason why the long term prognosis should be any different?

I mean, just because the 5x5 treatment is what we have been doing for the last n years, doesn't necessarily mean it was ever the 'best' solution eh? Like loads of things we do or have done traditionally so we assume it's ok, like eating meat (where is suggested that the animal fats are more likely to exasperate advanced prostate cancers than plant based fats) or burning what took millions of years to lay down fosil fuels in just 200 years wouldn't be without consequence. The levels of air pollution in London are being attributed to the increase in instances of dementia for example (and a load of other things) but for many, what they can't see can't hurt them. ;-(

Although my local hospital ,apparently did a few 5 day trials, putting this into the norm,is a little way away yet.

This was suggested to me 18 months ago at Coventry Hospital, unfortunately I wasn't suitable for the trial. Still suffering the side effects of the hormone therapy although no where near as bad as it was. Great to see that all the research and trials are still making improvements for the future.

Side effects seem to be different for nearly everyone,what was your worst?

Yeah, according to the TV News item I saw where they were interviewing the lady leading the trial she said (if I remember it correctly) that it was 'available at only 20 centrers around the country and from now'?

I don't know what percentage that is of those centres currently offering the 5x5 treatment but she didn't leave me with the feeling that it wasn't a live thing?

I mean, if they did start offering it now they could process 80% more people on the same kit in the same time.