A Look At The Growth Of Proton Therapy In the United States

From breast cancer care to treatment for prostate cancer, proton treatment therapy is becoming more and more popular in not only the United States but around the world as a whole. Proton therapy has become so popular for breast cancer care and the treatment of other cancers that there are now more than thirty total particle therapy centers under construction or in use. At the beginning of the year of 2015, just three short years ago, there were a total of about eighty treatment rooms in the works for proton therapy. Now, many of those treatment rooms have been able to be put into use.

Proton therapy is a type of radiation treatment for many kinds of cancers, from breast cancer care to brain cancer and prostate cancer. Proton treatment therapy is often viewed of as superior to standard radiation treatments for the way that it works. Proton therapy works by targeting a very small amount of affected tissue, keeping the dosage of radiation that is received directed only at the cancerous area of the body and sparing the rest of the body from receiving unnecessary and unwanted radiation. In fact, in the gastrointestinal system alone the radiation rates are incredibly low, as much as sixty percent less than with traditional forms of radiation therapy. The lungs will receive around fifty percent less radiation during proton therapy and it is more likely than not that the heart will be able to be prevented from receiving any radiation at all.

Aside from breast cancer care and as a treatment for breast cancer, proton therapy has been a remarkable way of treating prostate cancer as well. For those who have been diagnosed with what has been determined as low risk prostate cancer, the five year remission rate is at ninety nine percent after a course of proton radiation treatment has been fully completed. The rates for those diagnosed with intermediate risk prostate cancer is also good: nearly ninety five percent (ninety four percent to be exacting here) experience no recurrence of the cancer after five years after first going into remission after completing proton therapy. Those with high risk prostate cancer even still have good odds, with nearly three quarters (around seventy four percent) still relapse free after five years since the completion of proton therapy. And, like in many cases of breast cancer care and treatment, proton cancer treatment has far fewer side effects than traditional radiation. In fact, the vast majority of men who went through proton therapy to treat their prostate cancer were able to resume a completely normal sex life and sustain a libido after their treatment was fully completed, something that is far more unlikely to see after a man completes a course of treatment of the traditional form of radiation treatments.

From breast cancer care to treating head and neck cancer as well as prostate cancer, proton cancer treatment has become widely used around the United States and even throughout the world as a whole. Proton therapy presents a way to eradicate cancer while still preserving the health of other organs, something that has posed a difficulty in other methods of cancer treatment, such as traditional methods of treating cancer with radiation. Proton therapy therefore is able to give patients a much higher quality of life – while still maintaining impressive cure rates, especially in cases where the cancer is considered to be of low or intermediate risk (though high risk cancers are often cured through the use of proton cancer treatment therapy as well).