Treatment Options

Chemotherapy

If you have been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, or if your cancer has returned after previous treatment, your doctor may recommend chemotherapy. Other options for managing advanced or metastatic prostate cancer are radiation therapy and hormone therapy.
 
Chemotherapy works by killing fast-growing cells, but the drugs cannot discriminate between cancer cells and other fast-growing cells such as hair follicles. That is one reason for many of the typical side effects of chemotherapy treatment, including hair loss.

Prostate cancer is usually treated with the following drugs. You may receive a single drug or a combination of two medicines. Chemotherapy may be given orally, in pill form, by injection or intravenously.

• Mitoxantrone (generic), or Novantrone®
• Vinorelbine, or Navelbine®
• Docetaxel, or Taxotere®
• Estramustine, or Emcyt®, also Estracyt®
• Doxorubicin, or Adriamycine®
• Paclitaxel, or Taxol®
• Etoposide, or Vepsid.®

Your doctor may have you continue with hormone therapy while you are receiving chemotherapy.

You may receive chemotherapy once a week, or once every three weeks. Treatment will continue for as long as the cancer is responding unless side effects become a problem. The chemotherapy is given intravenously, with a drip into a vein.

You may opt to receive your chemotherapy in the Infusion Suite on the fifth floor of the SCCA clinic, or at the University of Washington Medical Center, on floor 8 SE. You may want to bring a friend or family member to sit with you during your treatment, which may take several hours.

Some promising chemotherapy treatments are only available through a clinical trial. Our doctors are at the forefront of prostate cancer research and are leading a number of studies looking for new and better treatments for prostate cancer.

Ask your doctor about clinical trials that may be appropriate for you. You may want to read more about clinical trials of treatments for prostate cancer.

More information on Chemotherapy:

• Side effects of chemotherapy 

More information on Treatment Options:

• Surgery
• Radiation therapy
• Hormone therapy
• Chemotherapy
• Watchful waiting
• Treating advanced prostate cancer

October 2004