Treatment selector

Radical therapies are designed to remove or kill the cancer cells but none of the available treatments can guarantee a complete removal of the cancer cells. The three most commonly used radical therapies are surgery to remove the prostate gland (called a prostatectomy), conventional or external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) which involves radiotherapy delivered from outside the body and which therefore passes through healthy parts of the body to reach the prostate gland, or prostate brachytherapy. Even if you have surgery to remove the whole prostate gland there is a chance that not all the cancer cells will have been removed. Studies have shown that cancer cells may still be present in at least 15 and even in as many as 50 patients in every 100 patients undergoing surgery.

The success rates for each of the three radical treatments were compared in a research study of nearly 3,000 patients with early prostate cancer carried out in the USA between 1990 and 1998. These success rates known as relapse free survival rates (the percentage of patients who would be expected to be free of prostate cancer 5 or 7 years after treatment) are shown below: