How Proton Therapy Provides new Hope For Cancer Patients
Here in the United States and in many other places all around the world, cancer is quite common. From breast cancer to prostate cancer to lung cancer to cancerous and malignant brain tumors, most of us have known someone who has been diagnosed with cancer – and many of us have even been diagnosed with some type of cancer ourselves. However, cancer treatments are improving by the year, with cancer research leading to new and exacting medical treatments – innovative, to say the least.
Proton cancer therapy in particular is breaking new ground, providing viable treatment options for many types of cancer, from prostate cancer options to breast cancer options. In many ways, proton radiation therapy is ideal due to its incredibly targeted approach, which allows for the precision dispensing of radiation that is simply not seen in other, more traditional types of radiation treatment. In fact, the use of proton therapy for cancer treatment, especially for breast cancer treatment, effectively eliminates the radiation that is sent to the heart and cuts in half the radiation that is experienced by the lungs.
And when we look at prostate cancer options, proton treatment for cancer is one of the best forms of treatment around. In fact, in men who have been diagnosed with low risk prostate cancer, using proton therapy as one of their best prostate cancer options is ideal, as it is one of the prostate cancer options that has the best outcome, with more than ninety nine percent of those who went through a course of proton radiation therapy still in remission up to five years later. Even those with intermediate risk prostate cancer have good odds, with more than ninety percent of them still in remission after that same period of time. And finally, even high risk prostate cancer patients should consider proton cancer therapy as one of their top prostate cancer options, as there is a seventy four percent likelihood that it will leave them in remission for five years or even longer, in many cases.
And the after effects that linger years after treatment has been concluded are, in many ways, much diminished when proton cancer therapy is used instead of some of the more traditional methods of radiation treatment. For instance, men who undergo proton therapy as one of their prostate cancer options often find that they are able to resume a sex life once treatment has been completed. In fact, this is the case up to ninety percent of the time. For other methods of radiation treatment for prostate cancer, however, this can be far from the case more often than it is not.
And proton cancer therapy is not just one of the prostate cancer options for treating prostate cancer. Aside from its use as an incredibly effective treatment for prostate cancer, proton therapy can be effectively used as a treatment for breast cancer as well. In adding to this, proton therapy for head and neck cancer, such as for malignant brain tumors, is also on the rise and is likely to continue to increase in the years that are to come.
A brain tumor is a scary thing – perhaps one of the scariest types of cancer that you can be diagnosed with. After all, our brains very much help to make us who we are and when the brain is impacted by cancer, the results of the tumor and the treatment for the tumor can be uncertain at best. A glioblastoma can be particularly frightening, a brain tumor that accounts for up to fifteen percent of all brain tumors diagnosed here in the United States and can be even more frightening when diagnosed in children.
However, as frightening as malignant brain tumors might be (or really any type of brain tumor, at that), the use of proton cancer treatment is paving new ground for the treatment options of such patients. For many who once thought that their cases were hopeless, and new sense of hopefulness and determination to beat cancer can be found after a course of proton therapy treatment for cancer, which grows more popular here in the United States as well as in other places throughout the world.