Prostate cancer could be cured in one week — Report

Prostate cancer patients could be cured in as little as a week with new high-dose targeted radiotherapy, Mirror Online reported on Wednesday September 18, 2019.

In trials, tumours were wiped out within days with treatment times slashed from the standard one to two months.

The breakthrough could save the NHS millions. It comes after Sir Rod Stewart revealed he has beaten the disease.

One patient who took part in trials said: “It was a breeze – not something I’d usually associate with cancer treatment.”

Developed by a United Kingdom team, it is the quickest form of the therapy to get this far in clinical trials.

The trial patient, Alfred, 84, diagnosed in 2013, added: “I only had to go in five times over two weeks.

“I didn’t have many symptoms after and was able to get back to my life.”

Rod Stewart revealed this week that he had beaten prostate cancer.

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In trials led by the Royal Marsden Hospital in West London, patients were given extremely high doses of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) beamed with sub-millimetre precision at tumours, cutting the risk of damaging healthy surrounding tissue which can lead to side effects.

Their tumours were wiped out in one to two weeks, compared with up to two months for standard radiotherapy.

The study split 850 patients into three groups, giving them different radiotherapy doses. Three months after treatment, side effects for those on SBRT were no worse than for standard treatment.

They will be monitored for several years to find if they are truly cured.

If continuing trials show humans can tolerate such high doses of radiation then SBRT could be offered on the NHS.

The breakthrough means tumours could now be cleared in a matter of days