Proton Beam vs. Radiation that Targets Breast Cancer Cells

To my knowledge, there isn't a lot of information out there about proton beam therapy because it's still in the early stages of testing. So far, there doesn't appear to be any controlled clinical trials that demonstrate this type of therapy has any survival benefit over radiation, although it does appear to have fewer side effects. There seems to be a study underway in the US looking at proton beam therapy in the treatment of prostate cancer, but nothing about using proton beam therapy for treating breast cancer. It's VERY expensive and is not widely available.

The general consensus seems to be that, so far, it looks promising, but there is no definite information about outcomes yet and the jury is still out.

There is a guy in Florida doing proton with a VERO machine. There's a video about it on youtube but I forget his name. I think there are only three VEROs in the country but I thought it sounded great. the one in Florida is doing it for people with five or less mets, going for a "cure" or long term remission. It was two years ago when I was really interested in this but I did not pursue because I had seven mets. I know in the video he helped a guy with lung cancer that no one would operate on, and he had remission for a long time, maybe still does. It's very precise and moves with your breathing so you only need a few treatments or sometimes even one treatment.

There are short treatment protocols with traditional external beam radiation as well if that is an issue for you. I did a clinical trial for partial breast rads (high gays for each treatment) in a 5 day period, 2x a day, 6 hours apart. This is becoming more common (shorter trtmt protocols) in traditional rads as well. I think MSK is doing 16 day rads (Canadian protocol ?) as well.