Radiation therapy can be used when the cancer is very small, or when it has spread beyond the prostate into surrounding tissue. It can also be used in addition to surgery. One form of radiation treatment is external beam radiotherapy . Brachytherapy , another method of radiation therapy, is the placement of a small pellet of radioactive material near or in contact with the tumor. This technique minimizes radiation exposure in other tissues.
Hormone therapy is used to reduce the amount of testosterone produced in a prostate cancer patient.
Since the prostate cancer cells need testosterone to grow, this method can sometimes be effective when other treatments are not an option. Chemotherapy can also be a possible recourse. A relatively new treatment, called cryosurgery , involves the injection of liquid nitrogen into the tumor to freeze the cancer cells. Current research with experimental drugs appears to be promising, and biological therapies are sometimes used. Some alternative treatments are also under investigation.