No one really wants to spend time researching a health condition that they do not have. Once you find out that you have been diagnosed with a condition, however, it is impossible to not do everything that you can do find out about all of the available options. Finding out about the latest options for proton therapy for cancer, for instance, can help empower a person who has recently been diagnosed with any number of cancers.
From breast cancer doctors to neck cancer specialists, there are an increasing number of options available to a growing number of patients. Proton therapy for cancer is an increasingly popular and effective option. For instance, treatment options for prostrate cancer can sometimes be difficult, with long term side effects. With proton therapy, however, the side effects can be limited. By definition, proton therapy is a radiation type that stops at a very specific point in the tissue that is targeted. Conventional radiation, in comparison, continues beyond the tumor. For instance, in breast cancer proton therapy means on average no radiation to the heart and on average 50% less radiation to the lung as compared to conventional radiation.
Proton Radiation Therapy is an Increasingly Popular Breast Cancer Treatment
Part of the difficulty of the treating cancer with traditional radiation and chemotherapy options is the time that the process takes, as well as the severe side effects that occur. Fortunately, with the latest targeted approach of proton therapy, studies have found that prostate cancer patients treated using this method have a significantly reduced risk of impotence. In fact, as many as 94% of men report that they remain sexually active after this treatment.
Consider some of these facts and figures about some of the latest cancer treatment options and the conditions that they treat:
- A proton therapy treatment session takes 15 to 45 minutes; the actual time spent delivering the protons to the tumor, however, is generally only one or two minutes.
- Proton therapy decreases the radiation dose to gastrointestinal structures by at least 59% when it is compared to X-rays.
- More than 30 particle therapy centers, with a total of about 80 treatment rooms, were under construction worldwide at the beginning of 2015.
- With brain tumors making up the majority, approximately 23,800 adults and 4,830 children are diagnosed with cancerous tumors of the brain and spinal cord every year.
If you find yourself in the difficult situation of facing a cancer diagnosis, it is important to work with a treatment center that has the best available options, like the latest proton therapy for cancer treatments.