Radiation And Hormone Combo Better For High Risk Prostate Cancers

17 January 2005
Radiation And Hormone Combo Better For High Risk Prostate Cancers
by George Atkinson

Men with high risk prostate cancers who are treated with both internal and external radiation and hormone treatment have a better chance of beating the disease than patients treated with radiation alone, says a study published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology.

Sometimes called radioactive seed implants or brachytherapy, doctors have been using internal radiation since the 1980s to treat prostate cancer. For patients with higher risk prostate cancers - defined as having at least two of the following three: a high Gleason score, a high PSA score and/or an advanced stage - doctors have been adding hormone therapy and external beam radiation therapy to the treatment plan to try to increase survival rates. In this study, doctors followed 200 men with high risk prostate cancer over eight years to see if adding external beam radiation and hormone therapy to brachytherapy did indeed increase survival rates.

Of the men participating, 107 were treated with external beam radiation therapy combined with seed implants. Another 69 patients received hormone therapy in addition to the seed implants and external beam radiation. After eight years, around 94 percent of the men who had hormone therapy in addition to the two types of radiation had no evidence of their prostate cancer, compared with 84 percent of the men who only had seed implants and external beam radiation therapy. "This is an exciting study because it shows that adding hormone treatment and external beam radiation therapy to seed implants does indeed help men with high risk prostate cancer to live longer without the cancer returning," said Gregory S. Merrick of the Schiffler Cancer Center.