Risks

Common side effects

Prostate brachytherapy may cause side effects, including:

• Difficulty starting urination
• Frequently feeling an urgent need to urinate
• Pain or discomfort when urinating
• Needing to urinate at night
• Blood in the urine
• Not being able to empty your bladder completely
• Erectile dysfunction
• Bleeding from the rectum
• Blood in stool
• Urgent bowel movements
• More-frequent bowel movements

Doctors often use medications to reduce side effects of treatment. Many side effects of prostate brachytherapy become less noticeable over time.

Rare complications

Some serious complications can occur after prostate brachytherapy, but these are rare. They include:

• Narrowing of the tube that carries urine from your bladder to the outside of your body (urethra)
• Abnormal opening (fistula) in the wall of the rectum
• Cancer in the bladder or rectum caused by radiation