When you get a cancer diagnosis, it can really and truly rock your world. There is simply no denying this. A cancer diagnosis can interrupt your short term plans, to be sure, but it can put into question your long term ones as well. It can change the course of your career, as well as the course of your relationships. It can alter your goals, and switch up your priorities in life.

But just because you have a cancer diagnosis does not mean that it’s time to throw in the towel. Getting a second opinion and finding a team of competent, compassionate, and highly skilled doctors is essential. This doctors will help you to understand the odds, the stage and progression that your cancer is currently at, and will then help you to overview your treatment options for prostate cancer or whatever type of cancer it is that you might have, though this article will primarily discuss treatment options for prostate cancer and the outcomes of such.

Depending on the stage of your cancer, your treatment options for prostate cancer will look different from the next person’s treatment options for prostate cancer. This is okay. Every cancer is different and progresses differently, if only slightly. So too must your treatment options for prostate cancer in order to best treat your cancer in the way that it is progressing and responding to said treatment options for prostate cancer. For some, this might mean surgery. For others, it will mean a course of chemotherapy. For many, it is a combination of the two.

When radiation treatment is also presented as one of the treatment options for prostate cancer, more and more doctors are suggesting proton radiation therapy instead of the more traditional course of traditional radiation therapies. There is a reason this is the case, and it has to do with both the success of proton treatment as well as the method of this said proton cancer therapy and the effects of such.

First off, proton therapy for prostate cancer has been proven to be incredibly effective as one of the treatment options for prostate cancer, especially in those who have been diagnosed with low risk prostate cancer. For such people, treating prostate cancer with proton therapy is all but a cure, as the rate of no relapse is ninety nine percent after five full years after completing the proton therapy treatment.

For those with intermediate risk prostate cancer, the odds are still nothing but excellent. After five years since completing proton therapy treatments and first going into remission, up to ninety four percent of patients have been able to remain cancer free with no further intervention in the form of proton therapy or the like. For those who have received a diagnosis of high risk prostate cancer, that odds are not quite as good but still considerable and impressive, as very nearly three quarter – seventy four percent, to be exact – of such patients are still in remission five years after their course of proton therapy has been completed.

Of course, proton therapy is ideal as one of the treatment options for prostate cancer for another reason as well, and this is the targeted approach that it takes in treating cancerous cells. Because of this targeted approach, other parts of the body are spared, preserving the health of the patient in other areas both during and after the proton therapy treatment course has been completed.

For instance, the heart and lungs are spared a great deal of the radiation, as is the gastrointestinal system (which will as much as sixty nine percent less radiation than it would with even your typical and everyday x-ray). This targeted approach also helps to preserve virility in men with prostate cancer, of whom ninety four percent were able to resume a relatively if not completely normal sex life after completing their proton therapy. With traditional methods of radiation therapy, this is simply not the case.

Getting a cancer diagnosis is a terrifying thing, but proton cancer therapy helps to ensure that you will not only survive but will thrive in the years that come.