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Proton therapy is an advanced treatment that sends radiation to the exact size, shape and depth of your prostate tumor. It allows your physician to treat your cancer while helping to protect healthy tissue nearby.
— Reggie, prostate cancer patient
With prostate cancer, patients often have a wide range of treatment options, like surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, radiation and more. If radiation is needed, proton therapy can be a safer choice.
With standard X-ray radiation therapy, the radiation dose is highest right where the X-rays enter your body. The X-rays keep giving off radiation as they go through your tumor and the tissue beyond. With proton radiation therapy, treatment is sent right to your tumor. The goal is for less radiation to reach your surrounding tissue.
Proton therapy uses a unique feature of protons: They give off the most radiation right before they come to a stop. That’s how we target treatment to your tumor and no further.
More precision means less damage to healthy cells in your urethra, bladder, bowel and sexual organs. This can translate to fewer short- and long-term side effects and secondary cancers (which can be caused by treatment).
If you have prostate cancer, the radiation oncologists at our proton therapy facility can decide if proton therapy is right for you and tell you more about this option.
Our radiation oncologists use pencil-beam scanning (PBS) to treat patients with proton therapy. PBS “paints” your prostate with a lot of very thin, very exact beams of protons. The beams are accurate down to millimeters. PBS sends very fast pulses of protons to each planned spot within the tumor until the entire cancer is treated. This method can lower the amount of radiation to healthy tissue even more. That may mean your physician can send a higher, more effective dose to your tumor.
Our proton therapy team is here not only to treat your disease, but to listen to you and take care of you and your family. They are experts in proton therapy who focus on giving you personalized treatment and who understand your questions, needs and concerns.