How will the situation at Chalk River affect a person scheduled to have radiation therapy for prostate cancer?

Hello. Good question.

The Chalk River problem really only affects the production of specific radio-isotopes which happen to be those used mostly in diagnostic tests, but less commonly in treatment. (One exception to this might be radioactive thyroid treatments or radio-labelled immuno-isotopes, but these are less common than the diagnostic scans.) In particular, for those in oncology (as I am) bone scans, MUGA scans, and thyroid scans are all affected.

For a person who has already been fully assessed and is planned for radiation treatment this is irrelevant. Radiation treatments will not be affected as they (almost always) use linear accelerators to produce their radiation and not radio-isotopes. In short, radiation treatments will continue as normal.

Prostate cancer patients who may be affected are those who are more recently diagnosed but have not yet had all the necessary tests. In particular those patients who would normally require a bone scan prior to treatment. Note that this is not most prostate cancer patients who are now low-risk patients who do not require a bone scan. Higher risk/more aggressive disease however where getting a scan remains important to decide what the best treatment is will be forced to decide whether to assume the scan will be negative and treat accordingly or wait into the new year when we hope that a new source of isotopes will be found and perform the bone scan then.

Hope this helps.

I'm not sure if there is anything currently taking place in Chalk River, but I assume you're talking about the accidents occuring at reactors in the 1950's.

The latency of tumors potentially caused by radiation exposure can be decades; whether it played a role in the development of prostate cancer is uncertain as there are usually stronger links to leukemia, thyroid cancer and skin cancer.

If your question is whether someone planning to receive prostate radiation therapy should worry how past radiation exposure might affect treatment or its side effects, then it's a very good question. In all likelihood not much, but details of past radiation exposure should be discussed carefully with a doctor before beginning radiation treatment.