Prostate cancer is the 3rd cause of cancer mortality in patient aged over 50 years. Radiotherapy treatment plans require specific conditions:
* Reproductibility of patient's positioning (requiring management of bladder and rectal fillings at each session).
* An image-guided treatment consisting in acquiring an image before each session. This pre-treatment Imaging allows the optimal adjustment of the target volume and organs at risk (bladder and rectum).
To allow reproductibility of target volume positioning at each radiotherapy session, it's recommended to have an empty rectum at the time of the radiotherapy preparation scan, and to check repletion before each session.
It's recommended that the patient has a comfortably full bladder to limit the volume of irradiated bladder mucosa. The radiotherapy teams don't have any recommendations concerning the rectum and manage this problem session by session, according to the repositioning Imaging of the current day.
According to a pilot study carried out in 2017 in the radiotherapy department of the Léon Bérard center, an intervention for a dilated rectum (probe or laxative) was necessary for an average of 25% of session per patient.
These rectal problems can be partly explained by the age (60-80 years) and sedentary lifestyle of patients with prostate cancer. Physical activities, adapted hydratation and changes in eating habits are an integral part of the constipation and flatulence prevention.
