In 2011, Dr. Padraig Warde and his team concluded that adding radiation to the treatment plan for high-risk prostate cancer should become part of standard therapy. (Video: UHN Youtube)
Long-term results confirm clinical research led by radiation oncologists at the Princess Margaret that adding radiotherapy to the treatment of men who have high-risk prostate cancer improves survival.
These results were published Feb. 17 in the
Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Adding radiotherapy to long-term hormone therapy halved the risk of men dying from prostate cancer within eight years. These results confirm the findings of an interim analysis that was published in the
Lancet in 2011, says Dr. Padraig Warde, principal investigator.
"In 2011, based on the interim findings, we concluded that adding radiation to the treatment plan should become part of the standard therapy," says Dr. Warde. "It's excellent to know that the benefit of combining radiation and hormone therapy is maintained over the long-term. This provides real hope – and quality of life – for men fighting this disease."
Between 1995 and 2005, the clinical trial recruited 1,205 patients with locally-advanced prostate cancer that had grown outside the surface of the prostate but had not spread further. Half were treated with hormone therapy and the other half were treated with a combination of hormone therapy and radiotherapy.
