Private MD News

Medications may provide pain relief in prostate cancer patients

Category: Prostate

For most men who receive positive PSA tests, their cancer will be treatable. Death rates for the cancer continue to edge downward. However, for those who have a metastatic form of the disease, working to beat cancer can be a long and painful process.

Fortunately, there are many medicinal options that a man can choose from to reduce the pain associated with prostate cancer while he tries to recover. One of the most popular examples of this is strontium chloride.

This is a radioactive molecule that has been proven to relieve pain in individuals with cancer that have spread to the bone. In these cases, pain can run throughout the body and is often debilitating.

"Strontium has been a God-send and has proved invaluable in providing patients with dramatic pain relief from the debilitating chronic pain of metastatic bone cancer without the side effects caused by opioids," said Dr. Ernie Meth, a physician at Temecula Valley Nuclear Medicine, which uses the treatment.

He added that strontium chloride does not have the risk of side effects that are associated with opiate pain relievers like morphine and oxycodone.