Treatment Options

Hormone Therapy

If you have advanced prostate cancer at the time of your diagnosis, or if your PSA levels are rising despite having had other treatment for prostate cancer in the past, your doctor may suggest hormone therapy. Hormone therapy may also be used after you have completed other treatments, such as radiation to the prostate gland, to decrease the risk of your cancer returning.

When used alone, hormone therapy does not cure prostate cancer, but it does stop it from progressing for a period of time. Typically, you can expect hormone therapy to control your prostate cancer for at least one to four years, and possibly for as long as 10 years or more. Eventually, however, the prostate cancer cells adjust to the lack of hormones and will begin to grow again without them.

The advantages of hormone therapy include halting the growth of your cancer, and avoiding surgery or radiation therapy. You may want to read about the side effects of hormone therapy, which include impotence, hot flashes and mood swings, before making a decision about treatment. 

How it works  
Male hormones, including testosterone, stimulate the growth of prostate cancer cells. Hormone therapy, which is also called endocrine therapy, interferes with the ability of testosterone or other testosterone-like hormones to bind to receptors on prostate cancer. Some types of hormone therapy turn off your body's ability to make testosterone. Other types keep the testosterone from getting to the prostate cancer. Without these hormones, the growth of your prostate cancer is stopped or delayed.

The most common form of hormone therapy is given as an injection. Typically you will receive a shot every one, three or four months, depending on the dose. Your doctor will monitor your PSA levels with frequent blood tests to make sure that the hormone therapy is working.

Other, less common types of hormone therapy include surgery to remove the testicles and estrogen therapy, which is given in pill form or as a skin patch rather than as an injection. 

Hormone therapy is effective in about 85 to 90 percent of the men who opt for this treatment. Although it is typically used to treat advanced prostate cancer, it may also be used in men with curable prostate cancers to shrink the prostate before surgery or radiation therapy, and to decrease the risk of prostate cancer coming back after radiation.

More information on Hormone Therapy:

• Side effects of Hormone therapy 

More information on Treatment Options:

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

October 2004