Brachytherapy reduces death rates in high-risk prostate cancer patients

A study from radiation oncologists at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson reveals that brachytherapy for high-risk prostate cancer patients is more effective than previously thought.

Findings in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, looking at almost 13,000 cases from 1988 to 2002, show that men who received brachytherapy alone or in combination with external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) had significantly reduced mortality rates.

Typically used to treat low and intermediate risk prostate cancer patients, brachytherapy treatment for high-risk patients is controversial and less common, partly due to early studies that associated it with lower cure rates than EBRT.

Co-author Timothy Showalter, MD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Associate Research Member of Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center, said: “Although studies like this cannot prove an advantage for brachytherapy, our report does suggest that brachytherapy is no less effective than EBRT and should be considered for some men with high-risk prostate cancer."

The team used multivariate models to examine patient and tumour characteristics associated with the likelihood of treatment with each radiation modality and the effect of radiation modality on prostate cancer-specific mortality.

Treatment with brachytherapy alone or brachytherapy in combination with EBRT, the researchers found, was associated with significant reduction in prostate cancer-specific mortality rates compared to EBRT alone.