The radiation therapy that uses the brachytherapy and the external beam radiation as the main treatment procedures has the general effect of damaging the DNA of the cancerous cells to stop their multiplying process. The proton theory is the same as the one mentioned above and is an operational procedure developed in the twentieth century. In the first stage this treatment method consisted of intraprostatic radium implants but the use of proton energy, proposed for the first time in 1946, for treating diseases such as cancer became a standard and popular operation only in these last two decades. The proton therapy is defined as a radiation treatment that uses an external beam and is regarded as the alternative for the Cobalt-60 gamma-ray therapy or the x-ray therapy.

These are the following steps for the proton beam radiation therapy:  the proton starts its complex journey in an injector placed in an electric field. There, the hydrogen atoms are divided into positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons; the protons are transported through a vacuum tube to the synchrotron at a rapid speed, circulating at about ten million times per second and increasing the energy of the protons with approximately seventy and two hundred fifty million electron volts, until they finally penetrate the skin of the patients body, an any depth possible. In the guidance room, where the patient receives the radiation treatment and the doctors guide the beam placement directly on the infected area of the body, all is recorded and observed by computers.

The exact beam radiation dose depends on how far spread is the cancer, the stage of the tumor and what are the first reactions of the body to such a treatment. The common side-effects are impotence and urinary or fecal incontinence and sometimes the proton beam radiation can also damage some surrounding healthy tissues because oncologists don’t have the possibility to guess exactly what necessary energy dose to use. Brachytherapy seems less risky than the proton beam therapy but in general, the radiation therapies have some risk factors and side-effects. The brachy term from the brachytherapy word comes from the greek translation of “short distance”, being known as internal beam radiation because the radioactive seeds or pellets are being inserted right into the prostate gland through needles thus avoiding the damaging of the surrounding organs or body parts.

This radiation procedure is also known as permanent brachytherapy and usually the side effects are: urinary incontinence, dysuria or painful urination, urinary retention, diarrhea, potential rectal bleeding, constipation. There is a possibility that the radioactive seeds implanted in the gland will find their way out of the prostate capsule and migrate to other surrounding areas such as the bladder, the urethra or into the urine or the seminal fluid. The results of the temporary brachytherapy, described as the direct placement of the radiation sources for a certain period of time, usually being only a few minutes or hours, will mostly depend on the type of cancer, the size and the location of the tumor and what is the required energy dose rate. The intensity of the dose can either be low-rate or LDR, medium-dose or MDR, a high-dose or HDR and a pulsed-dose rate or PDR. If a doctor has an experience with such treatment procedures, in this case being the radiation therapy, he will definitely know exactly just what dose should be use for a patient depending on the characteristics of his disease. The proton therapy for prostate cancer is based on what is written above so when deciding for a conventional treatment method the physician will ascertain what are the personal preferences of the patient but also his age, his genetic history and just how advanced is the cancer which affects him.