After a week or so of radical prostate cancer surgery, most patients can be discharged home to recuperate. Many patients and their families are more concerned about what to pay attention to in their daily lives and whether they need regular review. The following is a detailed description of these issues.
Stop smoking and drinking and watch your diet
Patients with prostate cancer do not have many requirements for their daily diet after surgery, even for patients with advanced disease who have not undergone surgery.
In general, the first step is to stay away from tobacco and alcohol, minimize the intake of animal fats, avoid dry stools and constipation, and adopt a healthy lifestyle.
- Smoking and drinking can irritate the prostate area, causing local congestion and increasing the chance of urinary tract infections and postoperative bleeding, which is not conducive to local recovery. In addition, the choking and coughing caused by smoking can increase the pressure in the abdominal cavity, causing wound pain or even wound eruption.
- Excessive intake of animal fat is not locally relevant to the prostate, but may cause cardiovascular system disorders, and in severe cases, cardiovascular accidents leading to death may occur.
- After surgery, one should take care to drink more water and eat fresh vegetables and fruits to avoid dry stools and constipation, because straining to defecate will increase the increased pressure in the abdominal cavity, causing wound pain and, in severe cases, wound eruption.
Second, due to the chronic depletion of tumors, patients in the mid- to late-stage are commonly undernourished or malnourished, which requires an increased appetite and better nutrition.
In addition, it is important to pay attention to balanced nutrition, not to be partial, to eat more high-protein foods, to eat more fresh vegetables and fruits, to increase the intake of vitamins and trace elements such as zinc and selenium, to match the staple food with coarse and fine grains, to let the food push through, and not to eat spoiled, smoked, pickled, fried and spicy stimulating foods. This will improve the quality of life and enhance the body’s own ability to fight cancer.
Appropriate exercise
It is often said that “life is exercise”. Exercise not only strengthens the body, but also keeps it optimistic and improves the body’s ability to fight disease. Therefore, we encourage patients to do appropriate sports.
Prostate cancer is prone to bone metastasis, which causes bone destruction, and with anti-androgen therapy that can easily lead to osteoporosis and possible fractures in patients, strenuous exercise is clearly not advisable. The company’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive range of products and services to help you achieve your goals.
In addition, long-distance cycling can cause congestion in the prostate area, which can lead to inflammation and is not conducive to recovery.
Adjunctive treatment after surgery
While radical prostatectomy is the best treatment option available for patients with early-stage and, in some cases, mid-stage prostate cancer, not all patients will achieve curative treatment. Moreover, a significant number of patients will experience postoperative recurrence or metastasis. This is because some patients have developed metastasis in adjacent lymph nodes or with the development of micro-metastases prior to surgery, and even some patients have a greater pathological stage of tumor than clinical stage with positive surgical margins.
For these patients with positive surgical margins, postoperative adjuvant endocrine therapy or radiotherapy can improve the cure rate. For those with limited high-risk prostate cancer (stage T2c or PSA greater than 20 ng/ml or G1eason greater than 7) and in cases where the tumor has been found to have invaded the peritoneum or seminal vesicles during surgery (stage T3), postoperative administration of adjuvant endocrine therapy may improve patient survival and reduce recurrence. Therefore, adjuvant endocrine therapy after surgery is necessary for these patients.
Limited high-risk prostate cancer should also be treated with adjuvant endocrine therapy after radical radiotherapy.
Adjuvant endocrine therapy after surgery is generally chosen as hormonal therapy. The most common regimen is maximal androgen blockade (MAB), which is a combination of luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone analogs (commonly leuprolide, goserelin, treprostin, etc.) and anti-androgen drugs (bicalutamide, flutamide).
Because prostate cancer is a highly androgen-dependent tumor, the use of drugs to block the trophic effects of androgens on the remaining tumor cells after surgery can be a “fix-it” approach.
So if the doctor suggests that belly shots and medications are needed after surgery, patients and families should understand the rationale and cooperate to fight the disease together.
Do I need routine chemotherapy or radiation therapy after surgery?
Do you need routine chemotherapy or radiation after surgery?
Tumors such as gastric cancer are treated with radiotherapy after surgery, and some patients are concerned about the need for radiotherapy and chemotherapy after radical prostate cancer surgery. We can tell you for sure that there is no need for conventional chemotherapy or radiotherapy after radical prostate cancer surgery. Only when prostate cancer enters the castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) stage, that is, when androgen blockade therapy still fails to stop the progression of prostate cancer, will other treatments such as chemotherapy be needed.
And even if a local recurrence or lymph node metastasis is found after surgery, chemotherapy is not needed immediately, but endocrine therapy is preferred. If the pathology after radical surgery is reported as positive cut margins, then adjuvant radiotherapy can be administered postoperatively with more favorable results. For most patients, if the cut margin is negative, radiotherapy is not required.
Review follow-up after surgery
Most prostate cancer patients have a satisfactory outcome after radical prostate cancer surgery, however, a significant number of patients will develop local recurrence or distant metastases after surgery. The purpose of follow-up after radical prostate cancer surgery is to detect recurrence early and to take action before the disease progresses further to improve long-term survival.
It is generally recommended that follow-up be performed every month for 1 year after surgery, every 3 months for the second to third year, every 3 to 6 months after 3 years, and annually after 5 years. The follow-up includes PSA, routine blood biochemistry and rectal or transrectal ultrasound or MRI, and in some patients, bone scan (ECT) or whole-body CTPET, with shorter follow-up intervals if necessary.