Prostate cancer 5 sessions radiotherapy- enough?

Hi !

There are many helpful people in this forum and I must say it’s a relief when you have lots of questions, which of course is natural fighting the cancer beast.

I don’t really know what the doctor means with 12 week. It might be that many starts to have the 3 month PSA checkup after final radiation because many things have stabilized in the prostate after radiation and you see more accurate trends from radiation in terms of PSA.

And yes, it can really take a long time for the radiation to have the full effect of killing of cancer and then reaching the lowest PSA value;the Nadir and of course the lower the better  So basically you might take lots of months and even years before everything has stabilized

If you’re on hormone therapy during and after radiation the trend is to reach the lower values faster than if your only having had radiation because not only is the cancer dying from radiation and then with hormone therapy it’s starved from testostorene to help it recover.

But still, the different types of radiation modalities basically have the same efficacy on killing cancer and that’s the most important part

Hi Liz. I think part of the problem is related to the hormone therapy. Have a look at this.

https://prostatecanceruk.org/prostate-information-and-support/living-with-prostate-cancer/how-hormone-therapy-affects-you?scrollTo=risk

In particular the section headed 'risk of other health problems'. 

You need to ask his consultant.

Hi i hope you don’t mind me messaging again- husband had a few problems re blood pressure after radiotherapy as Tamsulosin reduces Bp but slowly getting sorted! You were right a PSA test every 3 months- just had his first one 2.49 down from 5.68 prostate people seem happy with this and said it should continue to drop again in 3 months time! My query is his PSA has never been higher than 6 so should we be using it as an indicator of less cancer growth?? Surely a scan be better indicator?  Worried another 3 months of growth could be missed!! 

Hi Pastyum, great news hubby's BP issues are being sorted, and his PSA is falling, take that as a win, win, and even though radiotherapy has finished, it will continue working, often up to 2 years, and I  know we would all like our PSA to be undetectable as soon as possible but many studies show a slower fall gives a better long term outlook, and if recurrence were to happen, as the corresponding bounce is much more likely to be slow, your team will be ready for it.

Eddie 

Thank you