A new paper in the Journal of Clinical Oncology is reporting that the bowel and urinary side-effects of proton therapy (a high tech and very expensive type of radiotherapy), are no better than side-effects after standard high-quality radiotherapy (called IMRT). Quite a fuss on twitter when this paper came on line last week including from a fair few urologists, one of whom described proton therapy for prostate cancer as "a black eye for American healthcare"! (Thanks Scott!).
We chat with lead author Dr James Yu (Hartford, USA), and favourite GU Cast radiation oncologist Prof Shankar Siva to make sense of it all. And what does this mean for proton therapy in places like Australia who currently have no proton therapy facility.
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Links:
JCO paper