Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS FT are now offering a treatment for prostate cancer patients, aimed at reducing side effects from external beam radiotherapy treatment.
Patients undergoing this treatment for prostate cancer can develop rectal side effects such as bleeding and diarrhoea. The new treatment will allow a few people to be treated with a new technique, using an absorbable hydrogel spacer. This will be implanted between the prostate and the rectal wall, lifting the rectal wall away from the prostate, and therefore reducing the risk of side effects from radiotherapy.
The project is a collaborative effort between Weston Park Cancer Centre (as part of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS FT) and Chesterfield Royal Hospital, funded by the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw (SYB) Cancer Alliance.
Kate Linton, the trust’s Lead Cancer Clinician, said: “This treatment is already available in Derby and we’re delighted in Chesterfield to be involved in early implementation of this technique on behalf of the (SYB) Cancer Alliance.
“Hopefully this procedure can be rolled out to other trusts in the (SYB) Cancer Alliance in time. It will reduce the risk of some uncomfortable side effects such as rectal pain or bleeding. This is one of a series of improvements to optimise the care and management of people with prostate cancer across South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw and North Derbyshire”.
The first treatments were successfully carried out on Wednesday 28th July after two of the trust’s clinicians were trained up to perform the new technique.
The introduction comes just a few months after the department performed their first local anaesthetic trans-perineal prostate biopsy in March, a procedure that is able to target the whole of the prostate for a much more accurate diagnosis, greatly reducing the risk of infection.
