Radiation therapy is an appropriate treatment for early stage prostate cancer and in certain situations late stage prostate cancers. Radiation therapy is generally recommended for patients with no significant risk factors for radiation toxicity and who have a preference for this treatment.

Men receiving radiotherapy are generally slightly older than patients undertaking prostatectomy. EBRT is a treatment for prostate cancer where high energy x-rays are transmitted through body tissues and directed to the prostate. It involves leaving the prostate in the body and relying on the x-ray beams to kill the cancerous cells within the prostate. It involves going to the radiotherapy suite each day Monday to Friday for approximately 1 hour to be treated. This treatment lasts for approximately 7 weeks. Radiotherapy is completely painless. Bowel movements and the frequency of urination can increase during the treatment. These short-term side effects usually settle down within 3-6 months. Impotence can occur and approximately 50% of men will become impotent in the long-term.

There are a variety of ways of delivering radiation therapy and these varying forms of radiotherapy are suitable for different risks groups. The different forms of radiotherapy include; 3D Conformal Radiotherapy, Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) and Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT)

3D Conformal Radiotherapy

This involves minimising the amount of normal surrounding tissues that receive radiotherapy and maximising the amount of radiotherapy delivered directly to the prostate. This results in improving cancer control and minimisation of side effects.

IMRT:

Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy is a technique which uses a technology where the radiotherapy beams are modulated and adjusted to allow more accurate delivery of the radiotherapy beams to the prostate and minimises damage to surrounding organs. This technique is able to achieve tightly conformal dose distributions through the use of variable radiation beams. Each beam is divided into multiple segments to modulate the dose.

IGRT:

Image guided Radiotherapy is a technique where fiducial markers (gold seeds placed into the prostate prior to the radiotherapy commencing) allow the prostate to be better visualised at the time of the radiotherapy thus resulting in improved delivery of the radiotherapy beams to the prostate.