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Beginning prostate cancer treatment
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: Mar 13, 2022 | Replies (52)Comment receiving replies
Bandit11 I'm assuming you've discussed this with your radiation oncologist. My Gleason was 4+4 and my brother's was 4+3. We've both had the hormone therapy in conjuction with Proton Therapy. Our radiation oncologists recommended the dual treatment based on the research of the effectiveness of the treatment. The research indicates that the stage of cancer we and you have the combination treatment improves our chances of no reoccurring cancer from 58% to 82%. Within 5 years. Taking the hormone therapy before radiation seems the best approach. There are side effects but they do go away over time.
Replies to "Bandit11 I'm assuming you've discussed this with your radiation oncologist. My Gleason was 4+4 and my..."
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I have discussed with two different radiologists and have read all the research I can find that seems to be available on the subject. While hormone therapy definitely improves outcomes as to recurrence, it can cause other health issues ,both short and long term, that mitigate its positive effect. In my case, I am more interested in quality of life with length of life a secondary consideration but an important one. I will say that one has to be careful as to how any of these outcomes results are applied. For example, my particular 5 year recurrence estimate based on my Decipher Test is 2.6 percent with radiation only. Cutting it in half reduces it to 1.3 percent. At my age 74, reducing my quality of life for 6 months to a year is not worth it to me but everyone's considerations are different. I start the preliminaries for Proton therapy later this month. I hope you and your brother are doing well!