Treating prostate cancer, Part V: Radiation therapy
Along with active surveillance and surgery, radiation therapy (also known as radiotherapy) is one of the major options for managing early prostate cancer, and it also has a well-established role in the treatment of more advanced disease. It has been hard enough for a man with early prostate cancer to choose among these alternatives, and the decision is getting even harder. That's because radiation therapy is changing; there are now several options to choose from, including advanced methods for delivering external beam therapy, new techniques for providing internal radioactive seed therapy, and evolving strategies for combined radiation and hormonal treatment.
brachytherapyExternal beam radiation therapy
External beam therapy has been used to treat prostate cancer since the 1950s, but it has improved greatly since the late 1980s.
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