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I did not have proton treatment but I did a lot of research on it. Pencil beam is not exactly that new. I believe M.D. Anderson has been doing it for over 10 years. I like the idea since it makes better use of Brad's Peak. I would not quarrel with your decision to go with the older technology.
BTW.... I chose ADT3 (G7) as my primary treatment to avoid all long term side effects. I am expecting at least a 5 year vacation. Some men are getting over a 10 year vacation . I had a needle biopsy after 13 months of treatment and they could find no cancer.
I am three years removed from standard proton beam therapy (PBT) at MD Anderson, with a stable low PSA and no side effects to speak of. They were offering pencil-beam at the time, but only for Gleason 7+ cases (or for men whose prostate gland was atypical in shape). Dr. Andrew Lee (my radiation oncologist) stated there was no observable advantage to pencil-beam treatment for Gleason 6 patients.
I was tremendously pleased with the standard PBT treatment and wouldn't hesitate to make the same decision again if I had to. The hip issue never came up, and by the way, since I am an avid runner I did inquire about any adverse effects in that region of the body. Dr. Lee indicated no issue -- and time has borne that out so far. I run 3-4x per week, about 20 miles in total.
I am in a Men's Cancer Support in South Australia. There are from 8-10 regulars. Of those, two members ( aged late 70's -80's ) who received EBRT, maintain they now have restricted ROM and pain, which they attribute exclusively to Rad Therapy.
Back on the subject of Proton Beam, I received this from the Bro. of Balloon site. Seems pretty conclusive, although accompanied by the usual "We ain't no doctors" disclaimer:
Homer,
The reason you haven't seen much published on this is that it has been a non problem for the past 24 years. We have more than 7,000 members in our group. in the past 14 years, two have indicated they had hip problems, but it was never confirmed to be from their proton treatment. Lots of men have hip problems as they get older. We see no increase in that number in our membership.
Multiple surveys of our group show extremely high quality of life after treatment.
Keep in mind that although the protons travel through the hips, very little radiation is deposited on the hips. Almost all of the radiation is deposited in the prostate. When IMRT is used, most of the radiation is deposited on healthy tissue in the torso, including the hips.
I hope this is helpful.
Deb Hickey
Brotherhood of the Balloon
