What Patients with Prostate Cancer Need to Know About Radiation Side Effects

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For patients with prostate cancer undergoing radiation, the side effect burden exists on a spectrum, as one nurse explained to CURE®.

“Not one patient experiences everything to their full degree,” Jessica Fox, a radiation oncology nurse with Providence Cancer Institute in Portland, Oregon said during a conversation that was part of the “Speaking Out” video series.

Before patients of her clinic begin radiation treatment, Fox said, they will meet with a nurse for a discussion to make sure patients understand what they are about to go through, including the fact that not all patients experience all side effects to equal degrees of severity.

“And I think that really helps ease their mind initially, to just know that all of these scary things that we might be telling them, you know to take it with a grain of salt so they have that awareness of what may or may not happen to them,” Fox said.

“Those side effects that we go over specific to prostate cancer are irritated bowel symptoms, which we sometimes see,” Fox said. “That might be an increase in gut motility, just because of that tissue being irritated with the radiation. And so we find maybe some diarrhea or some looser stools. And then, as expected, those irritated urinary symptoms patients often go through … meaning they can have increased frequency, which is just going getting up and going pee more often, they might have some burning with urination, and then they might have this sensation of incomplete bladder emptying.”

Other side effects noted by Fox included fatigue and erectile dysfunction.

“Of course, these are all things that that we want to know about,” she said. “And we make sure to communicate that with [patients] early on, even though they are considered normal going through treatment. Nurses and doctors want to know what's going on, because there's often things that we can do to help them through these irritating side effects.”

Radiation side effects, Fox explained, are cumulative.

“After first couple of treatments, [patients] may or may not feel any different, but over time, [the side effects] do start to rear their head, fatigue being that one primary one,” Fox said. “And then we usually tell them that one to two weeks after the completion of radiation is kind of when they start to see things slowly dissipate. So that peak is going to be actually after radiation. And I think that's a big eye-opener for a lot of patients.”

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