What happens to the prostate after radiation therapy?
Luckily, malignant cells are usually more sensitive to radiation damage than normal cells. Part of this may be due to the fact that malignant cells are mutants, but certainly much of the difference is due to the fact that cells undergoing mitosis (cell division) are more susceptible to radiation damage than cells that are simply performing their normal functions. Since cancer cells reproduce more rapidly than normal cells, they are more likely to be undergoing mitosis when the radiation is given, and more likely to be killed by it. The normal cells in any gland, however, also turn over rather rapidly, so many of them are killed as well. In treating prostate cancer with radiation, we expect to kill all of the cancer cells, and many of the normal glandular cells as well. When we say that a cell is killed by radiation, we dont mean that it is physically destroyed. We consider it to be killed if it is damaged so that it can no longer reproduce, in the same sense that a cat becomes a biolog
