What Is a Treatment for Recurrent Prostate Cancer?

Identification

• When prostate cancer is first diagnosed in a man, it is either treated through chemotherapy, radiation and medications or the cancer is removed surgically. If the cancer reappears after an initial round of treatment, then this is called recurrent prostate cancer. With recurrent prostate cancer it is sometimes necessary to use different treatments because the first type of treatment proved to be ineffective, and some forms of cancer treatment can leave the body weak and care must be taken before using aggressive forms of treatment on recurrent prostate cancer.
  
  

Cryotherapy

• One of the methods used to treat recurrent prostate cancer is cryotherapy. In cryotherapy, the tumor on the prostate is frozen and the cancerous cells die from the extreme cold. Cryotherapy offers an alternative to the more aggressive radiation treatments that are sometimes used. Dr. Jonathan Izawa at the University of Western Ontario in Canada found that over 70 percent of the men who received cryotherapy in his 1995 study survived their prostate cancer.
  
  

Prostatectomy

• In some cases, men who have already had radiation therapy that has failed, and the cancerous cells are starting to spread, it may be necessary to undergo a procedure called a prostatectomy. In this procedure the portion of the prostate that is infected is removed. In more aggressive versions of a prostatectomy, referred to as radical prostatectomy, the entire prostate is removed and any affected tissue that surrounds the prostate is also removed.
  
  

Biological Therapy

• A doctor may try a biological therapy to combat prostate cancer that did not respond to initial rounds of radiation and medicine therapy. In this therapy, antibodies and growth factor hormones are injected into the body in the hopes that they will assist the immune system in developing an immunity to the cancerous cells that are in the prostate. This form of treatment is relatively new, and the prognosis for long-term success is still not known.
  
  

Hormone Therapy

• In order to survive and grow, prostate cancer cells require male hormones. In response to this, one of the treatments for recurrent prostate cancer is to reduce the level of male hormones in the patient. While depriving the cancerous cells the male hormones they need to survive can be effective for several years, the cells eventually develop a way to grow without the male hormones. When this happens, it is called hormone-refractory prostate cancer, and this form of prostate cancer is incurable with an average life expectancy of less than nine months.