What should you know about radiation and hormone therapy for prostate cancer?

Radiation treats targeted prostate cancer areas, while hormone therapy lowers androgen stimulation to help control hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. Using both can be considered when the treatment team wants local radiation and body-wide hormonal control. The schedule, duration, and need for each treatment depend on the cancer's extent, grade, symptoms, health, and treatment goals.

Radiation may be delivered from outside the body or through a source placed within or near the prostate. Androgen deprivation therapy, also called hormone therapy for prostate cancer, reduces the effect or production of male hormones that can stimulate prostate cancer cells. GnRH agonist drugs are one medicine group used in some hormone-treatment plans.

Hormone treatment can affect sexual function, energy, mood, hot flushes, muscle, bones, and metabolic health. Radiation can cause urinary, bowel, skin, or sexual effects depending on the area treated. Some effects are temporary and others may persist, so the team should explain what to watch for.

Ask for a written schedule showing injections or tablets, radiation appointments, preparation instructions, and follow-up tests. Tell the team about urinary symptoms, bowel conditions, heart or bone problems, and all medicines or supplements. Staying active within your clinician's advice, maintaining nutrition, and reporting side effects early can help the team support you. Do not stop hormone medicine or miss radiation appointments without contacting the treatment unit.

Contact the treatment team promptly for inability to pass urine, worsening difficulty passing urine, heavy bleeding, fever, severe diarrhoea, or new severe pain. Seek emergency help for chest pain, severe breathlessness, confusion, weakness on one side, or collapse. Keep the oncology unit's urgent contact number available during treatment.

Ask what the aim of combining radiation with hormone therapy is, which areas will be treated, and how the schedule fits together. Ask which side effects need a same-day call, how bone and heart health will be monitored, what happens if urinary symptoms worsen, and when treatment response will be reviewed.