Treatment for prostate cancer that has spread to bone

Your plan may use medicines that work throughout the body, treatment aimed at specific painful or vulnerable bones, and rehabilitation. Choice and sequence depend on previous therapy, the extent of disease, symptoms and other health conditions.

Hormone-based therapy reduces the signals that many prostate cancer cells rely on. Additional systemic medicines can attack cancer through other mechanisms, while targeted radioisotope therapy can carry radiation to cancer sites in bone in selected patients.

External radiotherapy can focus on a painful area or a site threatening nearby nerves. Bone-strengthening medicines act on bone turnover rather than directly replacing anticancer therapy. Pain relief, occupational support and physiotherapy help protect sleep, independence and safe movement while cancer treatment takes effect.

Bring a complete medicines list and describe pain by location, timing and effect on walking. Before some bone-strengthening medicines, the team may check kidney function, mineral levels and dental health. Tell your dentist about planned or current cancer treatment before an extraction or implant.

Follow the agreed schedule for blood tests and scans, and report side effects early rather than stopping medicine yourself. Ask which exercise is safe if a weight-bearing bone is involved. A physiotherapist can adapt activity, and an orthopaedic opinion may be needed when imaging suggests structural weakness.

New weakness in an arm or leg, difficulty walking, numbness around the genitals or buttocks, or a new loss of bladder or bowel control requires emergency assessment for possible spinal cord compression.

Get urgent help for sudden severe bone pain, inability to use a limb or suspected fracture. During treatment, follow your unit's emergency instructions for fever, shaking chills, breathing difficulty, confusion, uncontrolled vomiting or an allergic reaction, because some medicines can reduce infection defenses or cause acute reactions.

Ask which part of the plan treats cancer and which part protects bone, what side effects need a same-day call, and how benefit will be assessed. Clarify whether you need dental work first, whether supplements are appropriate, and what activities are restricted because of fracture risk.