Radiation Therapy for Prostate Cancer

Prostate Cancer Facts

Prostate Cancer Prevalence

• Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men and the second leading cause of death of men in the United States.¹
• The National Cancer Institute estimates that there were 186,320 new cases and 28,660 deaths from prostate cancer in 2008.²
• The American Cancer Society estimates that approximately 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with cancer in his lifetime, but only 1 in 35 will die from it.³
• More than 2 million men who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer at some time in their lives are still alive today.³

Prostate Cancer Risk

• Researchers have been unable to determine the reason why some men get prostate cancer and others don’t, but they do know that the older a man is the greater his chances of getting prostate cancer. On average, men are usually about the age of 65 when they receive a prostate cancer diagnosis.⁴
• A man is more likely to receive a prostate cancer diagnosis if his father or brother had prostate cancer.⁴
• A diet high in fat, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle are risk factors for prostate cancer.⁴
• African-American men are 61 percent more likely to develop prostate cancer than Caucasian men and are nearly 2.5 times as likely to die from the disease.⁵
• For all men with prostate cancer, the relative 5-year survival rate is 100%, and the relative 10-year survival rate is 91%. The 15-year relative survival rate is 76%. Modern methods of finding and treating cancer mean that many prostate cancers are now found earlier and can be treated with success. If you are diagnosed this year, your outlook is likely to be better than the numbers reported above.¹

Prostate Cancer Treatment

• For patients with other health problems, doctors often recommend a technique called “watchful waiting.” This approach involves monitoring the cancer without active treatment such as surgery or radiation. This is a good option for patients whose cancer is growing slowly, is small and is contained within one area of the prostate. This is a decision that should be made only with the consultation of your doctor.³
• A radical prostatectomy is a procedure that attempts to cure the cancer by removing the entire prostate gland and some surrounding tissue.³
• Radiation therapy uses high-energy rays to kill cancer cells without surgery. There are two main types of radiation therapy: external beam radiation and internal beam radiation.³
• External beam radiation delivers radiation similar to an x-ray to a patient at an outpatient center five days a week over a seven or eight week time frame. Internal radiation is delivered via radioactive seeds that are inserted into the prostate gland.³

Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT)

• Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) is a process using various techniques to locate the exact tumor location prior to a radiation treatment. The process is designed to improve treatment accuracy so that treatment margins do not need to be as large⁶
• Resonant Medical’s Clarity System is the first 3D ultrasound technology to provide IGRT for prostate cancer treatment. Clarity allows the radiation therapists to take a “real-time” image of the prostate at the time of treatment planning and then daily images with each consecutive radiation treatment. 
• The Clarity System’s imaging and segmentation allows therapists to account for changes in target size, shape and the position of the prostate to ensure for accurate delivery of radiation, thus providing patients with a higher quality of care. 
• The Clarity System was FDA-approved to treat prostate cancer in 2004. 

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¹ The Center for Disease Control and Prevention: February 6, 2009
² The National Institute of Cancer: February 6, 2009
³ American Cancer Society: February 9, 2009
⁴ National Institute of Health, Senior Health: February 9, 2009
⁵ Prostate Cancer Foundation: February 9, 2009
⁶  Duke University, School of Medicine: February 12, 2009