Health
Prostate cancer: NHS will offer precision radiotherapy to slash number of treatment sessions
Key Points
Thousands of men in England with prostate cancer are to be offered high powered “precision” radiotherapy that will cut their number of treatment sessions from 20 to five. The pioneering multibeam radiotherapy, known as stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR), will treat the condition far more quickly and with fewer side effects, said NHS England (NHSE).Standard external beam radiotherapy delivers several beams of radiation to the treatment area and is typically given as a number of daily...
Thousands of men in England with prostate cancer are to be offered high powered “precision” radiotherapy that will cut their number of treatment sessions from 20 to five.The pioneering multibeam radiotherapy, known as stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR), will treat the condition far more quickly and with fewer side effects, said NHS England (NHSE).Standard external beam radiotherapy delivers several beams of radiation to the treatment area and is typically given as a number of daily doses over a period of weeks. But SABR uses many smaller, focused beams of radiation directed from different angles that meet at the tumour, thus giving it a high dose of radiation while the surrounding healthy tissues get a much lower dose, lowering the risk of damage to normal cells.SABR is already offered to some patients with lung, liver, pancreatic, or brain cancer. The announcement on 10 June means that it will now also be available...