Brachytherapy: Aggressive prostate cancer may be under-treated
July 14th, 2009 Posted in radiation therapyResearchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have performed the first and only study designed to compare a single prostate cancer treatment, brachytherapy, to a combination of treatment methods for differences in mortality rates in men with high-risk prostate cancer.
The study disclosed that despite a higher baseline risk of death from prostate cancer, men who underwent a combination therapy of brachytherapy, hormone therapy and external beam radiation had a lower risk of death from prostate cancer after treatment when compared to men who brachytherapy alone or the combination of external beam radiation and had brachytheapy or hormonal therapy and brachytherapy.
This research is published online and in an upcoming print edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.