Prostate Cancer Treatment

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in Germany. According to the German Centre for Cancer Registry Data at the Robert Koch Institute, about 79,600 men were newly diagnosed in 2023. The good news: when it’s caught early, prostate cancer is often highly treatable, and many men can choose between several equally effective treatment options.

For prostate cancer that hasn’t spread beyond the prostate (localized prostate cancer), there are two well-established approaches.

Surgery (radical prostatectomy). The entire prostate gland is surgically removed. The procedure is performed under general anesthesia and carries the usual risks associated with surgery.

External beam radiation therapy. For the right candidates, radiation therapy is considered an equally effective alternative to surgery. A growing number of men are choosing this option, especially when they prefer a noninvasive treatment and want to avoid anesthesia and surgical risks.

The right treatment for you depends on the stage of your cancer, your risk profile and your personal preferences. Your care team will discuss your options with you in detail.

With conventional external beam radiation therapy, you’ll first have a planning CT scan. Based on this scan, your care team develops a personalized treatment plan.

Treatment is then delivered over several weeks, usually five days a week, for a total of up to 39 sessions. Throughout this entire period, the original plan stays the same. To make sure the tumor is reliably targeted at every session, a safety margin is added around the treatment area.

This margin is medically necessary, but it has a downside: the bladder and rectum sit right next to the prostate, and how full they are changes from day to day. Because of the safety margin, parts of these organs also receive radiation. This can lead to side effects affecting the bladder and rectum.

Treatment at Life Beam is also a form of external beam radiation therapy. The key difference is the precision and adaptability of the technology. Two advanced techniques work hand in hand.

1. Online adaptive radiation therapy: your plan adapts every day

With conventional radiation, the same plan is used for weeks. At Life Beam, we can adjust your treatment plan before every single session. Using state-of-the-art imaging and AI-powered algorithms, we account for the current position of the tumor, bladder and bowel. That means your treatment isn’t based on a plan created weeks ago, but tailored to your body as it is that day.

2. Real-time monitoring: minimal safety margins

We also use a system for marker-free positioning and monitoring with submillimeter accuracy. Both your position and the movement of the treatment area are tracked in real time. This allows us to significantly reduce safety margins and target the prostate and tumor with an accuracy of less than one millimeter, rather than exposing surrounding healthy tissue to radiation.

The result: a higher dose and far fewer appointments

Because we work with such precision and very little healthy tissue is exposed, we can significantly increase the radiation dose per session. This approach, called hypofractionation, means far fewer treatments are needed. Instead of up to 39 sessions, only about 5 to 10 sessions are required under optimal conditions. Each treatment usually takes about 16 to 20 minutes. Thanks to the greater precision, you can also expect fewer side effects.