What are possible side effects: Fatigue, bladder and/or rectal irritation, urine leakage, blood in the urine, impotence, or problems with bowel movements.⁴

Who makes a good candidate: Men who cannot or will not have their prostate removed, or men whose health makes his surgery risk higher than typical men. This procedure provides survival results equal to surgery for a man with a life expectancy of at least seven to 10 years.⁵

Two main types of radiation therapy are used to treat prostate cancer — external beam radiation and internal radiation. As always, discuss with your physician the therapy that is best for you.

External beam radiation therapy (EBRT) is a procedure where beams of high-energy radiation are focused from outside the body onto the targeted area.

Each treatment is an in-office procedure and lasts less than 15 minutes each day. Patients usually have five treatments per week at an outpatient center over a period of seven or eight weeks. With this procedure there is no risk of surgical bleeding, no hospitalization, usually no pain, no heart attacks, strokes, or blood clots.⁶

Internal radiation (also called brachytherapy) uses small radioactive pellets (each about the size of a grain of rice) implanted directly into the prostate through a thin needle.⁷ They may be permanent or temporary. The permanent pellets, which are sometimes called seeds, give off radiation for weeks or months.⁸ Because they are so small, they cause little discomfort and are simply left in place after their radioactive material is used.⁹

In another method, needles containing a higher amount of radioactive material can be used to place the material for less than a day.¹⁰ This approach is called high dose rate brachytherapy. With this procedure, you are usually required to stay in the hospital no longer than overnight, if that long. For about a week after the insertion of the needles, patients may have some pain in the area and a red-brown discoloration of their urine.¹¹