PTC CLINIC
Information for Healthcare Professionals

Modes suitable for proton radiotherapy allow for the increase of individual doses per fraction, the total dose, and the shortening of the total irradiation time, while maintaining the same biologically equivalent dose. Standard procedure for external beam photon radiotherapy is normofractionated treatment to a total dose greater than 78 Gy, which means treatment is for 39-42 fractions/8 weeks. For combination with internal radiation mode is used 25 fractions/5 weeks of external irradiation in combination with 2 fractions of internal irradiation exposure, which is performed under general anaesthesia with hospitalization. Comparison modes are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Comparison of the fractionation schedules in the treatment of prostate cancer

Proton radiotherapy is a highly effective method. The probability of cure measured as
5-year PSA relapse-free survival according to recent published data for low- and medium-risk prostate cancer is higher than 97%. Such results are usually not achieved using photon techniques or surgeries. Reasons for choosing proton radiotherapy:

1. When comparing data obtained from care providers’ databases, patients after proton radiotherapy have better overall survival than patients after photon radiotherapy.
2. Compared with surgical therapy, proton therapy does not lead to urinary incontinence, thus saving the costs spent on managing this issue.
3. Compared with surgical therapy, proton radiotherapy does not lead to impotence, thus significantly improving the quality of life of patients.
4. Proton therapy, compared with brachytherapy, has a significantly lower risk of the development of urethral stenosis and impotence.
5. Proton radiotherapy is a fully outpatient treatment method. In most cases, it does not require sick leave.
6. For low and intermediate-risk prostate cancer, 5-day stereotactic proton irradiation can be used.