The treatment of prostate cancer depends very much upon the “stage” at which a patient’s disease is diagnosed. There are now a number of different treatments in common use, and they all carry their own benefits, as well as certain associated risks.

For older men or those who already suffer from a serious chronic disease such as diabetes or heart failure often the first course of treatment followed is ‘watchful waiting”. This means that the growth of the tumor is carefully monitored by a series of tests, but unless it becomes absolutely necessary surgery and radiation treatments are avoided, since the risks of undergoing a large surgery may outweigh the benefits.

For those in otherwise good health one of the most common treatments utilized for prostate cancer that is localized within the prostate itself and has not spread to other areas of the body is a surgical procedure called radical prostatectomy. This basically involves the removal of the entire prostate.

On the upside this is possibly the most definitive treatment as the cancer is often able to be removed completely in one surgery, with patients facing only about a 4 week recovery period. On the downside though many patients experience incontinence and or impotence after the surgery but this can be controlled by common medications.

An alternative to surgery is radiation, of which there are two different types used to treat prostate cancer. External beam radiation therapy is the more traditional approach, using an external machine to deliver the radiation. Brachytherapy (also known as seed implants) involves the implantation of radioactive seeds into the prostate itself, which then time release radiation to specific areas. Both forms of radiation therapy have approximately the same rate of effectiveness.

More than half of the patients who undergo radiation therapy for their prostate cancer become impotent, which for some men can be particularly distressing. The other disadvantage of radiation therapy is it is difficult to ascertain if all of the cancer has truly been destroyed, and some patients experience a reoccurrence of the disease years after their initial treatment ended.

For those whose tumors have grown beyond the confines of the prostate the disease cannot be cured by either surgery or radiation. For these patients a course of hormone therapy is usually prescribed, in an attempt to lower the level of the male hormones, called androgens, being produced, as it is these hormones that encourage the tumor to grow. The object of the treatment is that by removing testosterone the tumor will eventually shrink.

Should hormone therapy be unsuccessful a prostate cancer has really run out of treatment options, and the disease is at that point incurable.