As any breast cancer doctor or patient can tell you, getting a cancer diagnosis is life changing. There are so many treatment options, so many potentials, that everything can seem very overwhelming. Your breast cancer doctor will give you your options and do their best to inform you on the potential outcome for every possibility. Many a breast cancer doctor is now recommending proton therapy as one of the advanced cancer treatment options, as well as doctors specializing in other types of cancer, such as treatment for prostate cancer.
Proton therapy for cancer is one of the advanced cancer treatment options that has shown incredibly promising results with minimal harm done, as it is able to send radiation to a very small section of tissue, effectively targeting the cancerous tumor while avoiding sending unnecessary radiation to other parts of the body that are not affected by cancer. In fact, proton treatment exposes lungs to only half of the radiation that they would be exposed to under typical radiation treatments and the heart is typically spared any radiation at all. The gastrointestinal structures, if not the origin of the cancer, are also largely spared, receiving nearly sixty percent less radiation than they would in a typical course of radiation treatments and x rays. For breast cancer doctors and patients, this is more than ideal.
Proton therapy is one of the best advanced cancer treatment options for prostate cancer. The results of men treated with proton therapy are vastly positive, with ninety nine percent of men diagnosed with low risk prostate cancer still cancer free fives years past diagnosis and proton therapy treatment. Men with mid level or high risk prostate cancer are likewise seeing good results from a course of proton therapy treatments, with ninety four percent of men with mid level prostate cancer still in good health five years later and nearly seventy five percent of men diagnosed with high risk prostate cancer checking in cancer free after five years. Proton radiation therapy also leaves these men with a higher quality of life than typical radiation treatments. Thanks to the highly targeted approach that proton therapy is able to use, impotence after treatments is largely able to be avoided in the majority of men. Nearly ninety five percent of men were able to resume a regular sex life after the conclusion of their proton therapy treatment course.
Proton therapy can also be ideal for brain cancer cases as one of the advanced cancer treatment options, of which there are more than twenty thousand cases diagnosed in adults and children alike every single year in the United States. This number includes both tumors on the brain and spinal cord, but brain tumors make up the majority of these cases by a considerable margin. Glioblastomas, for example, are a common type of brain cancer, making up nearly twenty percent of all diagnosed brain cancer cases.
From a breast cancer doctor to a prostate cancer doctor, more and more oncologists are recommending proton therapy as one of the advanced cancer treatment options to their patients. Proton therapy is spreading across the country, with more than thirty particle centers dedicated to proton therapy treatments in construction around the world at the beginning of 2015, totaling at least eighty treatment rooms.
