What exactly is successful? There are so many definitions when it comes to success; probably as many definitions as there are people. One's idea of success may be to have a billion dollars while another's may be to have safe drinking water. The difference in medical success for cancer treatment is probably just as vast in scope as these are. If you have gone through cancer treatment, you may have a different outlook on success than someone who doesn't even know where the hospitals in Illinois are located, let alone where you can get specific treatment for prostate cancer. You can bet someone who has had prostate cancer and lives in Illinois can probably tell you not only what is offered in the various hospitals in Illinois but also what is offered in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and maybe even nationally. They may even be able to tell you the different techniques offered at the different cancer centers.

One such technique they will probably have heard about is the one offered at Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee Illinois. It's state of the art and will probably cause you to pause when you hear what it is. It's a robot that assists the doctors in an operation called a da Vinci™ Prostatectomy. That's right; you can now have a robot operate on you, along with extremely skilled doctors, to remove the cancer from your prostate. Of course, it doesn't do anything by itself; it is dependent entirely on the surgeon operating it. It just provides the surgeon a more precise, less invasive way to do the same thing he/she could do without it. Just like any robot, it is only as smart as the person who is operating it or who programmed it, only this one can't be programmed. A robot offers a precise repeatable movement that also magnifies the view of the surgical area, decreases the likelihood of damaging delicate nerves and tissues and, since it uses a tiny incision, it reduces blood loss, pain, infection and scarring. Now that would probably fall into the definition of success in anybody's book that has to go through this type of surgery.

Another view of success would be "less is more" when it comes to radiation for cancer treatment. For those who have been through radiation treatment, you know it is not the burning and destruction of the tumor or cancer cells that is painful and sometimes debilitating, it is the destruction of the healthy cells around the tumor. With the latest in technology offered at one of the leading hospitals in the Chicago area it is possible now to get the most concentrated beam of radiation to your tumor without taking out the cells surrounding it. At Riverside they have the Varian 21 EX Linear Accelerator to deliver Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT). That means they can deliver a beam with greater precision and accuracy to just the tumor, reducing the incidence of side effects. For those who are getting radiation to the neck and head, that can mean a great deal in your quality of life after treatment. For anybody who is getting radiation treatments, it can change your viewpoint on your definition of success.