HOUSTON – Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death among American men.
Patients have several different treatment options. They include low-dose rate brachytherapy or high-dose rate brachytherapy. Both involve having radioactive seeds implanted near the tumor.
For years, very few patients took advantage of the high-dose option, but that may begin to change.
Greg Hildebrand, 64, didn't want to be sidelined for long after getting the diagnosis from his doctor.
Hildebrand recalled what his doctor told him. "Mr. Hildebrand, unfortunately we found cancer but not to worry, this is readily treatable."
To treat his prostate cancer, Hildebrand went with a procedure called high-dose rate brachytherapy, or HDR.
Unlike the low-dose rate radiation treatment, which permanently implants radioactive seeds directly into the prostate, the high-dose rate radiation is removed the same day.
Abhishek Solanki, a radiation oncologist at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, explained how the procedure works.
"The radiation is delivered right then and there later that day as opposed to having a permanent source inside you that slowly delivers the radiation over six to eight months," Solanki said.
Hildebrand received two treatments over two weeks. His side effects lasted only one month. Doctors say complications from the low-dose-rate treatment can last six months.
"It's cleaner, it's more direct, it's less intrusive," Hildebrand said.
HDR was clearly the better option for him, so why haven't all doctors embraced it?
"One of the reasons why is, from a resource perspective, for the staff and clinic, it's a little bit harder," Solanki said.
But Solanki said more doctors are starting to consider HDR brachytherapy as a treatment option now that there are 10-year studies showing it is just as effective as the low-dose rate treatment and the cancer doesn't return in 80 percent to 90 percent of patients in a certain risk group.
A study by the Cleveland Clinic found that brachytherapy was the cheapest of all treatments for prostate cancer with an average cost of $2,500. Brachytherapy is used only in patients whose cancer has not spread to other organs.