Opted for SBRT treatments 2 weeks for Prostate C: any experience?

@svagerko
I did not have surgery but radiation. I did not get SBRT but proton pencil beam. The side affects of SBRT (photon radiation) and proton radiation are similiar. There are so many options these days for radiation treatments.

How do you know has not spread outside prostate? Did you have a PSMA scan? If not that would be needed to help determine if had spread outside prostate. Do you have a Decipher test? That would determine the aggressiveness of his cancer. That would help determine type of treatments and if hormone treatments would be recommended. Those questions should be answered.

Without know if you are going to get the high dose or extended dose, doing margins, etc. It is hard to give you my experience with side affects. Most radiation treatments will have side affects. With some can be minimal with some worse. It really depends on the individual.

I had reduction of urine veolocity and flow. An increase in need to urinate. Some fatigue but not bad. These symptoms I have listed are all common side affects. After treatments ended they slowly started improving and now at 1.5 years afterward most are gone. I still have some leakage if I wait to urinate until it is high urge. So when I feel I can urinate I do and this has solved that leakage.

If you can provide us some more information I think we can be more helpful. Where is your husband having the treatment done? Where did you have the prognosis done? Again the test I mentioned re important to determine the aggressiveness of the cancer. The PSMA test should be done (my opinion not a medical one) if has not been done to give a more accurate determination if has spread outside prostate.

MCC has vast amount of experience in this and you will receive a lot of information to help you and your husband. In addition do some research on your own.

@sv2024
I had the mridian linac accelerator machine for my radiation treatment which finished in February 2023. My side effects were minimal and I believe a good part of the reason for that was that the Mridian linac accelerator has a built in MRI so everything is done with real time imaging while they treat me and see what they are treating, live. It is the reason the margins they used were 2mm versus 3-5 mm for other types of radiation. The margins are the area outside the entire prostate that is also treated as a standard of care, so the margins and the exposure are what impacts the healthy tissue. The bigger the margin number, the more healthy tissue is exposed and potentially the greater are side effects. I had 5 hypo fractional treatments. You might want to look at the mirage study which shows the advantages of real time MRI. The Elekta is another built in mri radiation machine and I hear they are using that at MD Andersen.

Thank you for your response very helpful. Our physician at Princess Margaret, Toronto, Canada also told us that he will perform the SBRT with MRI, he didnt share the name of the machine but told us that the procedure is performed within the MRI to ensure precision.
Did you have HRT, hormone therapy, my husband has been asked to start the therapy parallel to SBRT. If yes, were there any side effects?

Thankyou for your detailed response, very helpful. We are located in Toronto, Canada , my husband is being treated at Mt.Sinai and Princess Margaret. They performed a CT and Bone scan and confirmed that it was contained within the prostrate. The pathology report stated the stage was Teal. We were told that according to the pathology report he didnt need a Decipher test.
He will be undergoing SBRT and he has been advised to start hormone therapy, alongside SBRT treatment. We asked for PSMA test but were repeatedly told that was not required by both the surgeon and the radiation therapist, when we asked why, they said the stage and kind of cancer doesn't qualify for one.

@sv2024 I did not have hormone therapy. Even though my PSA was 10.2 the final radiation oncologist that treated me felt that I did not need it.

You also might want to ask about Spaceoar being inserted to help separate and give more space between the prostate and the rectum.