Treating Prostate Cancer That Doesn’t Go Away or Comes Back After Treatment
- 4 years ago
Treating Prostate Cancer That Doesn’t Go Away or Comes Back After Treatment
If your prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood level shows that your prostate cancer has not been cured or has come back (recurred) after the initial treatment, further treatment can often still be helpful. Follow-up treatment will depend on where the cancer is thought to be and what treatment(s) you've already had. Imaging tests such as CT, MRI, or bone scans may be done to get a better idea about where the cancer is.
Cancer that is thought to still be in or around the prostate
If the cancer is still thought to be just in the area of the prostate, a second attempt to cure it might be possible.
After surgery: If you’ve had a radical prostatectomy, radiation therapy might be an option, sometimes along with hormone therapy.
After radiation therapy: If your first treatment was radiation, treatment options might include cryotherapy or radical prostatectomy, but when these treatments are done after radiation, they carry a higher risk for side effects such as incontinence. Having radiation therapy again is usually not an option because of the increased potential for serious side effects, although in some cases brachytherapy may be an option as a second treatment after external radiation.
Sometimes it might not be clear exactly where the remaining cancer is in the body. If the only sign of cancer recurrence is a rising PSA level (as opposed to the cancer being seen on imaging tests), another option for some men might be active surveillance instead of active treatment. Prostate cancer often grows slowly, so even if it does come back, it might not cause problems for many years, at which time further treatment could then be considered.
Factors such as how quickly the PSA is going up and the original Gleason score of the cancer can help predict how soon the cancer might show up in distant parts of the body and cause problems. If the PSA is going up very quickly, some doctors might recommend that you start treatment even before the cancer can be seen on tests or causes symptoms.
Observation might be a more appealing option to certain groups of men, such as those who are older and in whom the PSA level is rising slowly. Still, not all men might be comfortable with this approach.
If the PSA is rising quickly enough to warrant treatment, but localized treatments (such as surgery, radiation therapy, or cryotherapy) aren’t likely to be helpful, hormone therapy is often the next option. If one type of hormone therapy isn’t helpful, another can be tried (see castrate-resistant prostate cancer, below).
Cancer that clearly has spread
If the cancer has spread outside the prostate, it will most likely go to nearby lymph nodes first, and then to bones. Much less often the cancer will spread to the liver or other organs.
When prostate cancer has spread to other parts of the body (including the bones), hormone therapy is probably the most effective treatment. But it isn’t likely to cure t
If your prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood level shows that your prostate cancer has not been cured or has come back (recurred) after the initial treatment, further treatment can often still be helpful. Follow-up treatment will depend on where the cancer is thought to be and what treatment(s) you've already had. Imaging tests such as CT, MRI, or bone scans may be done to get a better idea about where the cancer is.
Cancer that is thought to still be in or around the prostate
If the cancer is still thought to be just in the area of the prostate, a second attempt to cure it might be possible.
After surgery: If you’ve had a radical prostatectomy, radiation therapy might be an option, sometimes along with hormone therapy.
After radiation therapy: If your first treatment was radiation, treatment options might include cryotherapy or radical prostatectomy, but when these treatments are done after radiation, they carry a higher risk for side effects such as incontinence. Having radiation therapy again is usually not an option because of the increased potential for serious side effects, although in some cases brachytherapy may be an option as a second treatment after external radiation.
Sometimes it might not be clear exactly where the remaining cancer is in the body. If the only sign of cancer recurrence is a rising PSA level (as opposed to the cancer being seen on imaging tests), another option for some men might be active surveillance instead of active treatment. Prostate cancer often grows slowly, so even if it does come back, it might not cause problems for many years, at which time further treatment could then be considered.
Factors such as how quickly the PSA is going up and the original Gleason score of the cancer can help predict how soon the cancer might show up in distant parts of the body and cause problems. If the PSA is going up very quickly, some doctors might recommend that you start treatment even before the cancer can be seen on tests or causes symptoms.
Observation might be a more appealing option to certain groups of men, such as those who are older and in whom the PSA level is rising slowly. Still, not all men might be comfortable with this approach.
If the PSA is rising quickly enough to warrant treatment, but localized treatments (such as surgery, radiation therapy, or cryotherapy) aren’t likely to be helpful, hormone therapy is often the next option. If one type of hormone therapy isn’t helpful, another can be tried (see castrate-resistant prostate cancer, below).
Cancer that clearly has spread
If the cancer has spread outside the prostate, it will most likely go to nearby lymph nodes first, and then to bones. Much less often the cancer will spread to the liver or other organs.
When prostate cancer has spread to other parts of the body (including the bones), hormone therapy is probably the most effective treatment. But it isn’t likely to cure t