Faster treatment for prostate cancer patients
The radiotherapy department at Southend Hospital is taking part in a clinical trial to improve treatment for men with prostate cancer.
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK, but now patients with localised prostate cancer – that’s cancer that's inside the prostate and hasn't spread to other parts of the body - can have high precision radiotherapy treatment called Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) as part of the trial.
SABR is a new and much faster way of delivering radiotherapy, allowing much quicker recovery. This is great news for patients as it means they only need five doses of radiotherapy instead of 20, cutting the treatment time to one-and-a-half weeks instead of four weeks of daily treatment.
One of the first patients to take advantage of this new trial at Southend was Frank Harvey from Hockley. He said: “Cutting down on the time I had to be at the hospital was fantastic, and it was a lot easier than having to travel to the hospital every day for a month. It also puts you under a lot less pressure.
“It was reassuring to see the same faces delivering my care every day; it has been a really friendly service, made much better by taking less time.”
Dr Imtiaz Ahmed, Consultant Clinical Oncologist and Oncology Clinical Lead and the principal investigator in the trial, said: “We are at the forefront of delivering high quality treatment for cancer patients and this will add another cutting-edge technology to the excellent service that our team of dedicated oncologists, physicists, radiographers and other healthcare professionals provide. We look forward to recruiting more patients into this ground breaking trial for prostate cancer patients.”