What is hormone therapy for prostate cancer?
If detected early, prostate cancer is curable. While treatment choices are still controversial, they are generally based on the stage of the disease. Surgical removal of the gland is used for early and confined tumors. Radiotherapy or small pellet radioactive implants (brachytherapy) is also used in patients with earlier stage prostate cancer or whose health makes surgery unacceptable. When the prostate cancer is advanced, spreading to other parts of the body, treatment shifts to reducing the testosterone (male hormone) that feeds the prostate and its tumors. By depleting it, hormone therapy reduces symptoms and prevents further growth. But while hormonal manipulation causes prostate cancer to shrink in 85 to 90 percent of advanced prostate cancer patients, it does not cure the disease. In addition, the effects only last between 24 and 36 months. Scientists believe the results are only short-lived because prostate cancer contains different genetically identical cells, some of which may
