WORLD CANCER DAY – Let’s Get Talking About Cancer
Uniting the world’s population in the fight against cancer on February 4th 2017, World Cancer Day (WCD) aims to raise global awareness and educate people about the disease. It encourages governments and individuals worldwide to take action and in doing so, help to save millions of preventable deaths each year.
Taking place under the tagline ‘We can. I can.’, World Cancer Day explores how everyone can do their part to reduce the global burden of cancer.
So let’s raise the profile and get talking about cancer…
Prostate cancer. It is the most common cancer in men in the UK*, with over 47,000 men being diagnosed every year. That’s 130 men in the UK every day.
If caught early, prostate cancer can be easy to cure, with effective, minimally invasive treatments available to patients. However, the symptoms can be hard to spot, with early stage prostate cancer often having no symptoms at all. This is why raising awareness of prostate cancer, the possible symptoms, screening options and available treatments, is vital.
There are a variety of treatments available for prostate cancer including Low Dose Rate (LDR) brachytherapy (also known as seed implantation or internal radiation). BXTAccelyon makes LDR brachytherapy available via our collaborative, partnership approach with radiotherapy centres across the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
LDR brachytherapy is a form of radiation that delivers treatment to a localized and targeted area using tiny radioactive ‘seeds’ of Iodine-125 (each about the size of a grain of rice) which are inserted permanently into the prostate gland. The procedure can take up to an hour, and the patient can be sent home the next day. Generally, LDR brachytherapy has a low complication rate, and most men return to their usual pre-treatment activities within a couple of days. It is a minimally invasive treatment with significant quality of life benefits over alternative options.
BXTAccelyon are fast becoming one of the leading partners to hospitals and clinics worldwide in providing brachytherapy to treat prostate cancer. We understand that offering prostate cancer patients brachytherapy depends on physicians having access to high quality products delivered with expertise and reliability. Find your nearest treatment centre and discover how LDR brachytherapy treatment could help you or someone you know.
Of course, prostate cancer is just one of over 200 different types of the disease** and World Cancer Day is the ideal opportunity to spread the word and raise the profile of all forms of cancer in people’s minds and in the world’s media. This year you can follow and engage with WCD events, updates and initiatives using the hashtags #WCD and #WeCanICan. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook @BXTAccelyon
Visit the World Cancer Day website to find out more about how to get involved and help spread the word about cancer.