It is a lucky thing that we can talk about prostate cancer treatments, since we do know cancer is a ravaging disease, affecting a great part of the world’s population.



Side effects do exist though, and each particular treatment procedure may has its own set of side effects.

Basically there are two accepted treatment procedures: the conventional one and the alternative treatment.

The first includes surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, while the alternative method includes herbal therapy, homeopathy, physical body relaxation exercises, the use of magnetic field and hydrotherapy, etc.

We can’t actually say prostate cancer has side effects, because cancer is a disease that gravelly affects the functioning of the organism, especially when it’s an advanced stage.

The well known prostate cancer symptoms are frequent urination or weak urine stream, burning or pain while urinating, blood in urine or semen, painful ejaculation, back pains, stiffness, ache. When we talk about advanced cancer, bone pain is the most common of all, the cancer spreading fast to the lungs and liver causing coughing and chest pains, yellow skin and pain in the abdomen. If the spinal cord is affected by the prostate cancer it can cause a compression of the spine, resulting in weakness or fecal and urinary incontinence.

The side effects of the prostate cancer can actually appear only after we start a treatment, and since the purpose of this article is to talk about the prostate cancer side effects I’ll make a short list, depending on the treatment procedure used.

Surgery, also know as prostatectomy includes the risks of local bleeding, one per cent among men with ages between sixty five and sixty nine die because of the operation, anesthesia, impotence in about thirty five point five per cent cases or incontinence, in four point five per cent cases. For impotence there are treatments like Viagra or sildenafil tablets, devices to help stiffen the penis, injections with Caverject or the penile prosthesis; incontinence can be treated with medications or by using an artificial sphincter implanted around the urethra.

The radiation therapy is the second most common form of conventional treatment and its side effect are incontinence or impotence.

Cancerous cells tend to reappear after some time and the great disadvantage of the androgen deprivation therapy is its temporary effectiveness and serious side effects like cardiovascular diseases, breast enlargement or impotence.

Besides the evident hair loss, chemotherapy has its own set of side effects, even though we are talking about a long lasting treatment procedure, used even in leukemia cases.

Cryotherapy is the newest medical treatment procedure and its side effects are still being studied. The results gathered until today concluded that it may cause fistulas that leak urine, infections, the blockage of the urethra and sometimes an ineffectiveness of the freezing liquid inserted to kill the cancerous cells.

There are many other side effects and the doctor is responsible of keeping the patient informed about it. You are probably wondering why only conventional treatment side effects are mentioned. Usually the medical approach of curing a disease could be regarded as a bit more radical just because we are talking about a direct intervention on the damaged area of the body. This exact radical approach can have different results and even if we talk about a definite cure for the disease the side effects may still exist.

A correct treatment may decrease the number of the side effects.