| PROSPECTIVE
COHORT STUDY EXAMINING FATIGUE IN MEN UNDERGOING TREATMENT FOR
LOCALISED PROSTATE CANCER
Dr Dawn Storey, Duncan McLaren, John F Smyth, Michael Sharpe University of Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre |
Fatigue is recognised as a common effect of radiotherapy which can have adverse effects on quality of life. Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer and localised disease is frequently treated with radiotherapy or more recently, prostate brachytherapy. Survival for these men is commonly beyond ten years and there is little prospective data specifically relating to fatigue after radiotherapy and to our knowledge, no data regarding brachytherapy.
We followed up patients for three months after they received radiotherapy and brachytherapy. The main findings were that fatigue increased in both groups but returned to pre treatment levels by three months in the radiotherapy group. There was a suggestion that fatigue was continuing to increase beyond three months in the brachytherapy group.
Thanks to Prostate Research Campaign UK we were able to complete the preliminary phase of a three year research programme devoted to understanding more about fatigue in men with prostate cancer. We will be focussing on brachytherapy and doing further work examining fatigue in men with metastatic prostate cancer.