If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer, your world is likely to change. Things can feel uncertain – and certainly quite frightening – as you go about developing a treatment plan with your doctor. If your doctor doesn’t bring it up already, mention the chances of beginning proton therapy treatment, as this non-invasive cancer treatment provides a viable alternative to the typical radiation treatment for cancer. Typically, this non-invasive cancer treatment can be used in conjunction with chemotherapy or another treatment, but proton therapy is a non-invasive cancer treatment that can sometimes even be used on its own.
And the success rates of this non-invasive cancer treatment are certainly quite impressive indeed. As a matter of fact, treatment of prostate cancer has been very success when proton therapy has been used, as proton cancer treatment has led to high cure rates for this type of cancer in particular. After all, the data gathered on the subject more than backs up this claim, showing that, among men diagnosed with low risk prostate cancer, up to 99% of them were still cancer free after five years had passed – and among men with medium risk prostate cancer, the cure rate was still quite high after this same period of time, sitting at around 94%. Even high risk patients who went through proton therapy had good odds, with nearly three quarters of them (around 74%, to be just a little bit more precise) still without any recurrence of the cancer after this five year period of time.
And proton cancer treatment is a non-invasive cancer treatment that can be used for many other types of cancer as well. Aside from providing one of the best treatment options for prostate cancer, proton therapy for breast cancer has also been shown to be quite effective. Even proton therapy for head and neck cancer – particularly brain tumors – has shown quite promising results, something that has been hugely monumental for such cancers that can be incredibly difficult to treat – and even more difficult, if not sometimes even considered to be impossible, to send into remission. In many cases, this non-invasive cancer treatment sends new hope into the hearts of cancer patients, proving the proton therapy for cancer is something to be valued and researched further indeed.
And the side effects of this non-invasive cancer treatment are far lesser in comparison to traditional radiation treatment for cancer, even though proton therapy is still just as effective, if not, in some cases, even more so. This is due to the fact that this non-invasive cancer treatment has a very targeted approach, meaning that other organs that are not impacted by the cancer will be spared the impact of the radiation, something that can – unfortunately – not be assured during more traditional and commonplace radiation treatments, at least here in the United States.
As a matter of fact, the amount of radiation to the gastrointestinal system is reduced quite considerably when this area of the body has not been impacted by the cancer. In some cases, the amount of radiation will even be reduced by as much as 59% in comparison to even just your typical x ray, something that will most certainly be beneficial to the patients in question. In addition to this, breast cancer patients who are undergoing proton cancer therapy will receive no radiation to the heart and only about half of the radiation to the lungs that the typical radiation patients would get. All of this can certainly help to preserve their overall health quite considerably in the long run.
At the end of the day, getting a cancer diagnosis can be terrifying indeed but treatments such as proton treatment have made it so that remission is not only possible, but likely even probable as well. Cancer is scary, to be sure, but proton therapy – especially when combined with other cancer treatment methods – has already been shown to be quite effective indeed.
