January 5, 2007. Seventy-four percent of men treated with a combination of radiation seed implants and external beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer are cured of their disease 15 years following their treatment, according to a study released today in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of ASTRO.
This study was conducted by the physicians at the Seattle Prostate Institute. Doctors wanted to look at the combination of seed implants and external beam radiation therapy, two different types of radiation therapy, to prolong the long-term disease cure rates for prostate cancer.
Over the course of 15 years, doctors followed 232 men with early-stage prostate cancer who received a course of external beam radiation therapy followed by permanent seed implants a few weeks later. Sixty-five percent of these patients had T2b-T3 disease and the entire group had an average pre-treatment PSA of 15 ng/ml.
Seed implants, also called brachytherapy, are small radioactive pellets, each about the size of a grain of rice. The seeds are inserted into the prostate through small needles during a brief outpatient procedure. External beam radiation therapy involves a series of 25 short daily outpatient treatments, where a radiation oncologist precisely directs high energy radiation beams to kill cancer cells.
The patients were treated with I 125 or Pd 103 brachytherapy after 45-Gy neoadjuvant EBRT. Fifteen-year bichemical relapse free survival (BRFS) for the entire treatment group was 74%. BRFS using the Memorial Sloan-Kettering risk cohort analysis:
low patients risk, 88%,
intermediate risk 80%
and high risk 53%.
Grouping by another risk
classification system described by Dana-Farber Cancer Center radiation oncologist Dr. Anthony D'Amico, Ph.D, the BRFS was:
low risk 85.8%,
intermediate risk 80.3%
and high risk 67.8%
"This study is exciting because it shows that the combination of brachytherapy and external beam therapy are successful long-term at curing men of their prostate cancer," said John E. Sylvester, M.D., lead author of the study and the Director of the Seattle Prostate Institute in Seattle. "This is good news for men with prostate cancer since radiation therapy is less invasive, spares healthy tissue and helps patients return to regular activities sooner than surgery."
Sources & Links
Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2007 Jan 1;67(1):57-64. 15-Year biochemical relapse free survival in clinical Stage T1-T3 prostate cancer following combined external beam radiotherapy and brachytherapy; Seattle experience. Sylvester JE, Grimm PD, Blasko JC, et al. Seattle Prostate Institute, Seattle, WA. Full text free at Science Direct .
For more information about prostate cancer treatment options, please visit http://www.rtanswers.org.
Pomegranate Juice Slows PSA Rise in men With Recurrent Prostate Cancer After Surgery, Radiation
