The results of an extensive five-year study have now been published, showing that the method, which requires far fewer hospital visits than conventional radiation therapy, has a cure rate of 98.6 percent.

Currently, if you're diagnosed with the early stages of prostate cancer, there are three treatment paths available. Doctors can either decide to surgically remove the gland, implant tiny radioactive seeds into the prostate using needles in the operating room, or use external beam radiation, which involves between 42 and 45 treatments, taking place five days a week and spaced out over a period of two months or more.

Those methods are pretty effective, curing the patient 80-90 percent of the time. However, the SBRT treatment has the potential to make the therapy process far less disruptive, while also significantly increasing the patient's odds of beating the disease.