Pain Associated with PCa

March 27, 2010

One of the concerns that many (or most) men have about being

diagnosed with prostate cancer is the pain that can be generated by the

disease, especially in bone metastasis. The fact that this is said to occur infrequently

and that pain control methodology has improved significantly is not considered as

much comfort.

Against that back ground I thought I might share something I recently came

across in this regard - the use of gamma knife radiation to the pituitary

gland. The poster was on the Prostate Cancer Awareness Face Book site and she

said that her father had the treatment and described his pain relief as ‘miraculous’.

but have also discovered that this procedure has been carried out at South Nassau

Communities Hospital,

the University

of Toronto and possibly the

University of Pittsburgh.

The doctor carrying out the procedure at South Nassau

J. Snyder, MD was kind enough to give me some

brief additional information. This is what he said:

<SNIP> I am not aware of any studies currently

underway looking at the efficacy of gamma knife hypophysectomy to treat

metastatic bone pain. The truth is

1) it is fortunate that there are few patients with

such severe pain that cannot be treated with more traditional methods such that

any one center could only see a few patients and

2) as this is a procedure of last resort the only

thing we would have to compare it to is not doing anything and many patients

have very limited life expectancies due to the severity of there disease.

Those of us that do this procedure believe

wholeheartedly in it's merits in the small subset of patients we offer it to. <SNIP>

I’d be interested to know if anyone else has

any information on this subject.

All the best

Prostate men need enlightening, not frightening

Terry Herbert

- diagnosed in 1996 and still going strong

Read A Strange Place for unbiased information at http://www.yananow.net/StrangePlace/index.html

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