Medical Imaging News

January 24, 2007

Treating Advanced Prostate Cancer with Radiation Therapy Reduces Recurrence

Although it does not seem to improve the length of survival, using radiation therapy to treat advanced prostate cancer after removing the prostate gland does reduce the risk of disease recurrence, according to a recent study.

The November 15, 2006, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published the trial results, titled "Adjuvant Radiotherapy for Pathologically Advanced Prostate Cancer."

Researchers compared usual care with adjuvant radiation therapy for 425 men with cancer outside of the prostate after radical prostatectomy to determine the effect on metastasis-free survival and overall survival. Men were randomly assigned to receive external beam radiotherapy (n = 214) or usual care plus observation (n = 211); patients were enrolled between August 1988 and January 1997.

A total of 43.1% of the patients in the observation group were diagnosed with metastatic disease or died (median metastasis-free estimate, 13.2 years) as compared to 35.5% of the patients in the adjuvant radiotherapy group (median metastasis-free estimate, 14.7 years), a difference that was not statistically significant.

There also was no significant difference between the two groups for overall survival (71 deaths in the radiotherapy group versus 83 in the observation group). Though, adverse effects were more common with radiotherapy (23.8%) than with observation (11.9%), including rectal complications and urinary incontinence.

The team did find that patients in the adjuvant radiotherapy group had a 57% lower risk of PSA relapse, and a 38% reduced risk of disease recurrence, compared to patients in the observation group.

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