Whether you have been diagnosed with head and neck cancer, prostate cancer, or breast cancer, a cancer diagnosis is a life changing thing. Determining everything from treatment courses to the type and length of the treatment can seem overwhelming. For those who have cancer that has been diagnosed in the later stages, the future can all too easily seem frightening and unsure. But proton cancer treatment, a burgeoning method of cancer treatment, has increased dramatically in popularity. Proton cancer treatment is very similar to the standard and widely utilized radiation treatment provided to many different cancer patients, but is the superior option for a number of reasons.

For one, proton cancer treatment works through the application of radiation in very targeted doses. Because of the way that it is administered, proton therapy leaves the surrounding tissues and organs relatively untouched in a way that traditional methods of radiation do not. For instance, with proton cancer treatment it is likely that no radiation will effect the heart and that the radiation to the lungs, a vital organ if there ever was any, will be reduced by as much as fifty percent when compared to traditional radiation methods. Even the gastrointestinal system is typically spared, receiving nearly sixty percent less radiation than compared to the amount of radiation it receives in traditional methods of radiation treatment for cancer and even just x rays.

And the success that proton therapy for cancer has had has been not insignificant, particularly for prostate cancer. For those who have had testicular cancer and proton cancer treatment, the survival odds have been proven to be very good. For men who were diagnosed with low risk prostate cancer and then went through proton treatment for prostate cancer, the survival odds after five years with no recurrence of the cancer are around ninety nine percent. Intermediate risk prostate cancer survives have nearly equally good odds with ninety four percent who went through proton cancer treatment have no recurrence after five years. And even high risk prostate cancer patients have good odds, with nearly seventy five percent of them who have gone though proton cancer treatment having no signs of recurrence after five years, the distinction between “in remission” and “cured.”

For treating prostate cancer, proton therapy is often ideal, as it tends to have less significant side effects than traditional cancer radiation treatments. For instance, the resumption of a normal sex life is significantly more possible after proton cancer treatment than after normal radiation, making it the gold standard of treatment options for prostate cancer. And data shows that nearly ninety five percent of all men who had gone through proton therapy were able to continue on with normal sex lives after their treatment was completed.

Proton cancer treatment has also been likewise suggested for advanced treatment options, as it has shown to be highly effective while still reducing the risk to other organs in the body that have not been particularly effected by cancer. Protecting these organs is important, but they often become significantly and even severely damaged over the course of normal radiation treatments.

Cancer is a scary thing, there is absolutely no doubt about it. But radiation treatment helps to provide hope, and proton cancer treatment provides the most hope of all for cancer patients who have been diagnosed at each and every stage of the disease, from low risk to high risk. Cancer is scary, but there is no reason to lose hope when there is access to proton therapy, as it has become the gold standard of cancer radiation treatments.