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Why so few Proton Therapy discussions?

Prostate Cancer | Last Active: Jul 14 12:04pm | Replies (24)

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Profile picture for retireditguy @retireditguy

I'm not a medical professional and I really don't know the answer to your question, but here's my guess. According to a recent study of almost 63,000 men, of the roughly 60% of low and intermediate risk patients who chose either radiation or surgery, only 1/3 chose radiation. Assuming most of those are photon radiation patients (since there's a lot less proton machines available), then I suspect the population of proton radiation recipients is small. Considering that generally only a tiny percentage of men undergoing treatment get on this blog, then I conclude that it's just a result of the statistics. Certainly they're welcome here, but since so few undergo proton treatment those that do get on the blog probably don't get a lot of feedback from fellow proton recipients (since there's so few on the blog) so they probably don't stay. As I said, I don't know but that's my guess. I'd encourage you to hang around and continue posting and maybe you can help vitalize that topic on the blog. Best wishes.

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Replies to "I'm not a medical professional and I really don't know the answer to your question, but..."

I’ve definitely been hanging around as the topics are pertinent. But I have to make a decision next month. My first oncologist wanted IRMT and wouldn’t consider SBRT. Given such a strict position, I looked into a 2nd opinion. The Mayo folks I talked to offered a SBRT trial testing an AI mapping and Proton. Proton being a 5 fraction or 20 fractions. Having been in the AI field and looking at their website, I wasn’t interested in the AI SBRT. I chose Prtoon SBRT. Maybe I should be looking at a 3rd opinion?