Not all radiotherapy is equal

A friend of mine has got prostate cancer. He told me he was going to have radiotherapy. I asked him what sort. He didn’t know.

Now to me, for a highly intelligent person not to understand the different types of radiotherapy available makes no sense. If I had prostate cancer I’d want to make sure that the radiation beam being used was being aimed specifically at my prostate and not the surrounding normal tissue.

Why? Because the side effects of most kinds of radiotherapy are caused by collateral damage to normal tissue, in particular the bowel and the bladder. When these critically sensitive tissues receive radiotherapy, the early side effects can include diarrhoea, bleeding and often a bladder infection.

However, it is the later side effects that are more worrying; the bowel can be severely damaged resulting in profound clinical problems for many years. These can all be avoided by making sure the radiation delivery is as precise as possible

For all these reasons, if I had prostate cancer I would go to a treatment centre that could guarantee more precise treatment: image guided radiotherapy (IGRT) and intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT).

CancerPartnersUK is creating a network of private cancer centres, run by leading medical professionals providing exactly this type of radiotherapy.

Contact us to find out more about how we can help with your treatment and read what our patients say about us.

Karol Sikora
Medical Director