YOU might have been slightly perplexed this month to spot more people than usual sporting a moustache. This isn’t a new trend for quirky facial hair but Movember – when men around the world grow a moustache for the month of November in a bid to raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues such as prostate and testicular cancer.

This movement, which has seen over £400 million raised globally since 2003 for men’s health issues, highlights the risk of prostate cancer – the most common cancer in men. One in eight men will get prostate cancer in their lifetime, and there are currently over 330,000 men in the UK who have suffered from the disease at some point in their lives. This year alone, over 47,000 men will be diagnosed in the UK, which equates to 129 men every day.

Radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer is often viewed as somewhat invasive, with uncomfortable long-term side effects such as diarrhoea and bleeding occurring in a proportion of men. In April 2018, the Rutherford Cancer Centre South Wales in Newport treated the first patient here in the UK with high energy proton beam therapy for prostate cancer, which heralded a new era in British cancer care.

Proton beam therapy is a type of radiotherapy used in cancer treatment which delivers heavily charged protons with a high degree of accuracy to minimise damage to peripheral tissue and organs. The proton can be controlled to stop at a defined point in the body, which may reduce side effects.

Proton beam therapy can be used to treat a wide range of cancers including tumours within the brain or near the spinal cord, as well as paediatric, prostate, breast and head and neck cancers.

Dr Jason Lester is a senior Consultant Clinical Oncologist at the Rutherford Cancer Centre South Wales specialising in the management of urological (prostate, kidney, bladder) and lung cancers. Dr Lester treated the first patient to receive high energy proton beam therapy in the UK earlier this year.

Dr Lester said: “It is great news that patients who need it can have proton beam therapy treatment closer to home. While proton beam therapy is not a panacea for all cancers, there are many cancer patients who could benefit from this treatment each year. Having now treated a number of patients at the Rutherford Cancer Centre South Wales with proton beam therapy, I have seen first hand the positive effects that this can have on patients in terms of their overall wellbeing during treatment.”

The Rutherford Cancer Centre South Wales is currently the only place in the country which offers proton beam therapy. Its sister sites, the Rutherford Cancer Centre Thames Valley in Reading and Rutherford Cancer Centre North East in Northumberland, will open proton therapy units following completion in 2019.