[ RadSafe ] External radiation treatment for Prostate Cancer

[alstonchris at netscape.net]

Brian

I see that Rob has given a far better, and more authoritative, answer than I could.? I might only add that the beam E is, I think, more accurately described as 6 MVp, than 6 MeV.? Also, to expand a little,?the total dose could be less, if it were delivered over a much shorter period of time (1-2 weeks), in much fewer fractions (3-5), as?with the?Cyberknife, which is the XBRT equivalent of HDR with a source.? I await the slings and arrows.


Cheers
cja


-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Rees <brees at lanl.gov>
To: radsafe at radlab.nl
Sent: Tue, Jul 28, 2009 5:11 pm
Subject: [ RadSafe ] External radiation treatment for Prostate Cancer


A colleague and friend of mine is receiving external radiation treatment for prostate cancer. He had some questions regarding his dose that I was unable to answer, so I figured I'd turn to Radsafe:?
?
He has been told that the total dose over 8 weeks of treatment is 58 Gy, is that reasonable? (I KNOW that the Doctor prescribes treatment, and does what they think is best, but this seems a bit low to me)?
?
What is the probable energy of the radiation? He was told 6 MeV, that seems kinda high to me. Or is this just Emax, with E ave ~1/3 Emax??
?
Is there an approximate whole body dose for each treatment or an integrated WB dose equivalent? Even approximately? Since blood is irradiated, and there's some scatter, I figure there's some sort of pseudo-WB dose....?
?
Thanks,?
Brian Rees?