Important facts

The first stage for all patients referred to The Prostate Brachytherapy Centre is an assessment visit to make sure that we have all the important facts about you that we need to know. To help decide whether prostate brachytherapy may be right for you we need to be sure that:

• You are in reasonably good health.
• Your prostate specific antigen (PSA) is usually below 25 ng/mL.
• Your Gleason score, which measures how aggressive or quickly your cancer is growing, is below 9.
• Your cancer is localised to the prostate gland and has not spread to areas outside it.
• Occasionally, if our assessment suggests that there is a high chance your prostate cancer has spread to cells outside your prostate gland you may be offered a short 5-week course of external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) before you have brachytherapy treatment.
  Click here to find out about EBRT
• We may also suggest that you have a 3-month course of hormone therapy before the EBRT, as research studies have shown this can increase your chances of a success.