Giuseppe Sasso: Auckland Radiation Oncologist Associate Professor on the new information on radiotherapy for prostate cancer appointments

There's fresh information for prostate cancer patients and their doctors to consider when making treatment decisions. 

A UK study has found those treated with a highly targeted type of radiotherapy appear to have fewer problems with two major side effects, compared with those who have surgery. 

Auckland Radiation Oncologist Associate Professor Giuseppe Sasso says the treatment is also more convenient compared to conventional radiation. 

He says it's able to take care of their disease with five appointments, rather than a four week, Monday to Friday course of radiation. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Some good news this morning for keV prostate cancer patients.
Results from a study from twelve leading UK cancer centers
found men with early signs of prostate cancer who undergo
a highly targeted type of radiotherapy reduce the risk of
two major long term side effects in continence and sexual dysfunction,
but also cuts the treatment time down from about twenty

(00:22):
visits to just five. Four Thousand men are diagnosed with
prostate cancer in New Zealand each year. Giuseppe Sasso is
a radiation oncologist and is with us Live this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good morning, Good morning cure everyone.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
How are you yeah, really well? Thank you? What exactly
is this? Can you describe how it works? This targeted radiotherapy?

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yes, so it's a it's a new form of radiotherapy
that is called stereotactica blative radiotherapy also SBRT or SABER,
and instead of delivering a radiation over a long course
of treatment twenty appointments five times a week over four weeks,

(01:04):
it delivers treatment in only five appointments of about twenty
minutes thirty minutes each. This new form of radio therapy
can be delivered with either conventional liner accelerators, so the
historical machine. They have been used for many years to
treat patients with radiotherapy or otherwise with a new form

(01:26):
of linear accelerators that are called capable of motion management.
One of them is, for instance, the cyber knife, which
is a machine that is capable of tracking the motion
of the target during the delivery of the radiation.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
So it's like, how does it do that? Is it
like a laser or something that tracks.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Have The machine has the radio therapy device mounted on
a highly precise robotic unit which basically is capable of
seeing the motion of the prostate because the process has
some little beads, little seeds of golden that are being

(02:08):
inserted by urologists prior to the delivery of the treatment,
and the machine can actually see those beads in three
dimensions and follow them with some limited accuracy, so.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
It can target it way bit of targeting. And what
does this mean? Obviously it could mean shorter you know
time spent and going to appointments and stuff like that,
But what does it mean for you know, survival and health.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
We're known for a very long time that both surgery
prostrotect them in the removal of the prospects and radiotherapy
have very very high rate of survival and control of
prospect cancer, especially when this is quoted at a very
early stage of disease. In terms of this recent data,

(03:00):
what we know now is that the most the more
targeted radiotherapy with the technique that have just explained, the
stereotatic ablative radiation seems to be a little bit better
than conventional radiotherapy in controlling prospect cancer five years. Of course,
we will wait for data at ten years and fifteen years,

(03:23):
but it is very exciting for patients and for radiation
oncologists and the urology community to know that districtment is
so effective and it also it appears that when delivered
so precisely, the rate of side effects is incredibly low,

(03:44):
with very very low risk of severe complications.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, which and that those particular complications are the ones
that men worry about, you know, your incontinence and your
sexual dysfunction. Jusepe. So, so thank you very much for
your time. Radiation Oncologists, some good news this morning.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
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