Looking at the Pattern of Radiotherapy Treatment Modalities for Prostate Cancer

A study presented at the 2022 American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting compared the use of different radiation therapy (RT) techniques in prostate cancer (PCa) using data from a large, national hospital-based registry.

In this study, Ana Supariwala Nassar, BS, and colleagues assessed a set of N0, M0, nonsurgical PCa patients diagnosed between 2004 and 2015 using the National Cancer Database. The population of interest was grouped into 6 categories based on RT modality: intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) with brachytherapy (BT) boost (n=12,734), IMRT only (n=106,246), proton therapy (n=4561), stereotactic body radiation therapy (n=7533), low-dose-rate brachytherapy (LDR BT) (n=45,452), and high-dose-rate brachytherapy (n=23,400).

According to the results, the most common treatment modality for PCa patients was IMRT, which was used in more than half of RT techniques (53.1%) across the risk groups. In the low-risk group, IMRT and LDR BT were used a similar proportion of the time (35%). “The rate of utilization for each RT modality was not representative of its corresponding median OS in the studied population,” the researchers said. “The association of improved OS with proton therapy, higher median income, and increased distance from treatment facility all suggest that health care disparities and selection biases are largely responsible for the differences observed, both by the clinicians’ offering of select modalities and the patients’ access to pursue certain therapy.”

The researchers concluded that future management of patients with PCa via radiotherapy modalities “would likely benefit from randomized clinical trials and longer observation periods.”

Source: Agrawal R, Dey A, Datta S, et al. Pattern of radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer (PCa) patients: analysis of a hospital based registry. Abstract 2469. Presented at the 2022 ASTRO Annual Meeting; October 23-26, 2022; San Antonio, TX.