As soon as prostate cancer moves out of the prostate gland and spread into other parts of your body it is referred to as advanced prostate cancer and treatment is far more difficult than when cancer is limited to the prostate gland.
If prostate cancer has not spread too far and is not too aggressive it is possible not simply to treat it but in fact to cure it. In many cases however where cancer is widespread, or is particularly aggressive, treatment is a matter of merely holding back the progression of the disease and giving you the best quality of life possible.
Nowadays one of the main treatments for advanced prostate cancer is chemotherapy often using a drug called docetaxal. This is a particularly effective drug treatment for many patients and does indeed slow the progression of prostate cancer and extend life for many patients. Nonetheless, it does have a number of side effects that include such things as nausea, loss of appetite, hair loss and a greater risk of infection. Consequently it is here that we run into one of the biggest problems in advanced prostate cancer treatment.
If you are treating a condition that cannot be cured and that will eventually kill you, then lengthening your life by holding back the progression of the condition is good provided that treatment gives you an acceptable quality of life and does not leave you with the feeling that the treatment is worse than the condition itself.
For many prostate cancer patients, who are often in their 60s or older, chemotherapy is not pleasant but is a price worth paying to buy them some time when they first start their treatment. However, as time goes by and the side effects start to build the picture often changes and many patients start to question whether or not it is worth it. Of course this is never a simple question to answer and must be the subject of a very personal discussion between yourself, your family and your physician.
Many of us will be familiar with this situation either as a result of our own personal experience with illness or as a result of our experience of seeing family members of close friends in this situation and know only too well just how difficult a time it can be.
There may however be a little light at the end of the tunnel as studies involving a group of patients with metastatic prostate cancer suggest that many patients may be able to take a 'chemotherapy holiday' without any significant harm to their treatment. In other words, after a number of weeks of chemotherapy, and when the side effects are really staring to get you down, you may be able to stop your treatment for a time and let your body recover a bit before going on with your treatment.
Naturally it is early days yet and nobody is quite certain yet about exactly how long a 'chemotherapy holidays' might be or how often you can take them, but for a significant number of advanced prostate cancer patients this seemingly small advance in treatment might well make all the difference in the world.
