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← Return to SpaceOAR causing issues
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Prostate Cancer | Last Active: May 1 10:25am | Replies (59)
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Vircet, I did not have SBRT but everyone I know or met in the hospital who did have a 5 session protocol, had a gel spacer.
Fiducials only help the machine track the prostate - they do not block any radiation from getting to the rectum.
Beams pass right thru the prostate and hit everything before passing thru the body - the rectum and bladder being the most susceptible to damage.
I had 25 salvage treatments and could not have a spacer and even though the radiation per session is less than that of SBRT, the damage is still cumulative. So I could still have proctitis down the road, even though you are experiencing it now. No one is unscathed! Best of luck to you,
Phil
Replies to "Vircet, I did not have SBRT but everyone I know or met in the hospital who..."
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Thanks, Phil. I had 8 Gy per treatment x 5 = 40 Gy cumulative. If this is too private for you, can you reply by private message how many Gy cumulative you had over 2 treatments?
I appreciate your putting into perspective, the fact that radiation passes through the body. All along I thought it stops at the target -- the beams came from many directions and meet at the target point. so I thought the "focus beams" stop where they met, now I got to think they disperse again beyond the target and out to the other side of the body. May b e I will do some more reading about how Elekta Versa HD works. Before my treatments began, I discussed MR-Linac with my oncologist, but it was after my second treatment that MR-Linac wasn't the one used for me. The cancer center has many other Elektas but only one MR-Linac which alone cannot treat all patients. I was told that some patients could not have fiducial markers implanted, in those cases they get treated with with MR-Linac. (I got the impression that if the prostate moves out of target position, the machine stops and adjusts before resuming radiation. If so, I wonder if after hitting the target, do the beams scatter on the way out of the body? I would not be asking my oncologist anymore about this -- too late now, maybe I should have asked before my treatment began?)