Radioactive Seed Implant
Quality of Life After Brachytherapy
Any cancer treatment negatively impacts a patient’s quality of life for a period of time. Different treatments do have different “personalities” and recovery periods though. In general, prostate brachytherapy and radical prostatectomy both tend to create more intensive urinary tract side effects and have a longer recovery period, while external beam radiotherapy tends to create both urinary tract and lower bowel side effects, but often less in magnitude and with a faster recovery period. A comparison of all three methods of treatment, using the FACT-P validated quality of life instrument measurement, is illustrated in (FIGURE 20) (7). There is no perfect quality of life instrument but this one does give a reasonable idea as to the typical magnitude and duration of negative quality of life effects following various treatments for prostate cancer.
