Is proton therapy the best kind of radiation for prostate cancer?

My radio alarm goes off early in the morning. Often one of the first ads I hear while I am getting ready to move out of bed is from Loma Linda University Medical Center. They are pushing their proton beam radiation therapy early in the morning for old guys like me who might have prostate cancer and can’t sleep much past 5 in the morning. They hail it as causing fewer side effects than standard treatment. What they don’t say is that it is nearly twice as expensive as the standard therapy. So is it better? No one really knows. There have been no head to head comparisons with standard treatment. But, this week, The Journal of The National Cancer Institute (Jan 2, 2013) published a possible answer to this question. The researchers were radiation therapists from Yale Medical School. They looked at data from the huge Medicare database to see if they could at least get at least a sense of whether proton therapy was better. The Medicare database consists of codes. Every time a doctor treats a patient, he or she puts in one of a huge number of 5-digit codes for the diagnosis. Sore throat has one code, broken leg, another, etc. Treatments also have codes. Standard radiation had one code and proton beam another. Likewise the complications of the treatment each have their separate code. Rectal problems, bladder problems, sexual problems, all of which can occur with radiation for prostate cancer, each have their own code. The investigators identified men who had received radiation...
Source: Dr.Kattlove's Cancer Blog - Category: Oncologists Source Type: blogs