Thousands of men with prostate cancer in England are to be offered high-powered precision radiotherapy on the NHS. The new treatment is designed to reduce the number of times patients need to go to hospital and to cut the risk of some of the side effects associated with conventional radiotherapy.
The treatment is known as stereotactic ablative radiotherapy, or SABRE for short. It is described as a pioneering approach that delivers radiotherapy with pinpoint accuracy, targeting tumours from many different directions in order to focus the dose where it is needed.
SABRE is not entirely new to medicine. It is already being used in the treatment of other forms of cancer, for example lung cancer, where the same principle of delivering highly targeted radiotherapy from multiple angles has been applied. Its extension to prostate cancer marks a further step in its use.
One of the biggest changes for patients is the number of sessions involved. A standard course can involve twenty doses of radiotherapy, taking up a great deal of time and energy. Using SABRE, the treatment is delivered in just five doses over the course of only two weeks.
Because the treatment is delivered in fewer sessions and with greater precision, patients are expected to face fewer side effects. For the right sort of people, supporters of the approach say, it represents another option that can make a real difference to how their cancer is treated.
Among those who have already experienced the treatment is a patient named Edwin, who took part in a clinical trial using SABRE. He described it as an absolute godsend, saying he was over the moon that it would be available to other men and that the side effects had been a lot easier and more manageable.
It is thought that, initially, around 3,500 men a year with low or intermediate risk prostate cancer will choose to take up the new treatment. With fewer treatments and therefore fewer side effects, the NHS hopes the option will benefit a significant number of patients each year.