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Prostate cancer patients could be cured in just one week instead of a month with targeted high-dose radiotherapy sessions.
Doctors at the London Royal Marsden hospital are this week set to treat the first patient as part of a trial looking into whether it is safe to give radiotherapy in two large doses instead of lots of smaller doses.
Earlier this month researchers from the hospital's NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research found that the typical amount of radiation to treat prostate cancer – delivered in small doses over about 20 sessions in a month – could be safely given in just five big doses in just one or two weeks.
The trial's leader and consultant clinical oncologist at the Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research in London (ICR), Dr Alison Tree, told The Times that working age men could 'come in, get cured, get on with their normal lives and forget about their cancer completely'.
There are nearly 50,000 diagnoses of prostate cancer each year, making it the most common form of cancer among British men.
Reducing the number of sessions needed to treat the cancer from 20 to just two would save the NHS millions of pounds and enable radiotherapy units to treat more patients.
Dr Tree said: 'When I started training 15 years ago we were doing very basic radiotherapy, where you'd treat big, square areas of the body.
Doctors at the London Royal Marsden hospital are this week set to treat the first patient as part of a trial looking
