Sexual health recovery after prostatectomy, external radiation, or brachytherapy for early stage prostate cancer.
Each of the three most common contemporary treatments for localized prostate cancer, radical prostatectomy, external beam radiotherapy, and brachytherapy, can have adverse effects on sexual health. Sexual health outcome can be improved by treatment-specific factors, such as the use of nerve-sparing technique during radical prostatectomy, or worsened by the use of androgen deprivation before external beam radiotherapy or brachytherapy. Contemporary studies that have used validated questionnaires to evaluate multiple components of patient-reported sexuality following prostate cancer treatments provide benchmarks of sexual outcome expectations that are of interest to patients selecting their prostate cancer treatment.
Hollenbeck
Brent K
BK
Division of Urology, Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, Rabb 440, 330 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Dunn
Rodney L
RL
Wei
John T
JT
Sandler
Howard M
HM
Sanda
Martin G
MG
D001918:Brachytherapy; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011468:Prostatectomy; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology / Q000532:radiotherapy* / Q000601:surgery*; D011788:Quality of Life; D020127:Recovery of Function; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000502:physiology*