Prostate Seed Implant Treatment 

            About Prostate Seed Implant Treatment      

• Men who have prostate cancer that is confined to the prostate gland may be excellent candidates for prostate seed implant. For these men, prostate seed implant offers disease-free survival comparable to radical prostatectomy and conventional external beam radiation.
  
• Radical prostatectomy is the surgical removal of the prostate gland. It requires a four-day postoperative stay in the hospital.
  
• External beam radiation, a treatment that uses x-ray-type radiation, kills the rapidly growing prostate cancer cells. This is given externally and usually takes eight weeks to complete.
  
• Prostate seed implant can be performed as outpatient surgery. 
  
• Dr. M. Connie Nguyen, along with several local urologists, is offering this treatment at The Cancer Center of Cape Fear Valley Health System. 
  
• The side effects of prostate seed implant are minimal. Eighty percent of men receiving this treatment reported an excellent quality of life. The rate of maintenance of sexual potency with prostate seed implant has been reported to be 86 to 92 percent, which compares with rates of 40 to 70 percent with radical prostatectomy and 60 to 80 percent with external-beam radiation therapy. The risk of urinary incontinence is less than five percent.
  
• Prostate seed implant requires significantly fewer visits than the daily visits required of external beam radiation treatment. The recovery time is shorter than for surgery as well. Patients return to their pre-treatment lifestyle in about three days with prostate seed implant versus three to four weeks for surgery. For these reasons, prostate seed implant is a convenient choice for men who are still in the workforce.
  

           How is Prostate Seed Implant Performed?

• About a week before the surgery, the physician and the Medical Physicist uses a special ultrasound probe and sophisticated computer equipment to determine the volume of the patient’s prostate and its location relative to the pubic arch and other landmarks. After hours of study, they determine the locations where they will implant tiny radioactive seeds of Palladium-103 in the patient’s prostate. Each seed corresponds to a point on a grid. When all the seeds are written down on the plan, it looks like a cross stitch or a child’s Lite Brite. The goal is to target the radiation on the prostate gland while sparing, as much as possible, the normal tissues.
  
• In the Operating Room, the physician places a grid over the patient’s perineum, the area between the scrotum and the rectum. The area is numbed during the procedure. The grid corresponds to the grid on the treatment plan the Medical Physicist and physician have planned in advance. The grid has letters on the x axis and numbers on the y axis.
  
• Needles (called stilettes) are placed in the grid according to the plan. When the last needle is placed, the physician removes the stilettes, leaving the hollow tubes in place. With a small hand-held machine called a Mick Applicator, the physician drops the radioactive pellets of Palladium into the prostate. The pellets are about the length of a grain of rice, but narrower in diameter. They will remain permanently in the prostate. The energy of the Palladium-103 isotope will last only about two months, long enough to kill the cancerous cells. The radioactivity is too weak to be detected even at the skin surface, so there is no danger to the physician and staff in the operating room or to the patient’s friends or family.
  
• For more information about prostate seed implant as a treatment for prostate cancer, ask your urologist or call the Radiation Oncology Department at The Cancer Center at (910) 609-6690.
  

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