Can Initial Radiotherapy Improve Survival with Prostate Cancer?

CHICAGO—Patients with newly-diagnosed hormone-sensitive metastatic prostate cancer (mPC) who had prostate radiotherapy (RT) before their androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) lived longer than those treated with standard ADT alone in a retrospective analysis—the largest single-center experience to date of primary tumor-directed RT in mPC—reported to the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

https://meetinglibrary.asco.org/record/162060/abstract

After adjusting for the baseline demographics there was an association between receipt of prostate radiotherapy and improved overall survival according to lead author Scott Carlyle Morgan, MD MSC, a radiation oncologist at the Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre, University of Ottawa, Canada.

He said the findings were “consistent with the hypothesis” that radiotherapy directed to the primary tumor may have altered the natural history of metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. But he tells the Audio Journal of Oncology this was by no means definitive and he awaits results of the randomized studies.