Shorter Radiation Regimens Like CyberKnife Get The Same Results as Conventional Treatment Which Require Many More Treatments
For the study, published in the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Genitourinary Cancers Proceedings, a supplement to the Journal of Clinical Oncology, 1,115 men with low-risk prostate cancer were randomly assigned to a conventional schedule (41 treatments over 8 weeks) or to a hypofractionated schedule (28 fractions over 5 weeks)
The primary purpose of the study was to determine if hypofractionated radiation therapy results in five-year disease free survival that is not lower than conventional radiation therapy by more than seven percent.
The study also looked at overall survival rates and patients’ biochemical recurrence, which is a rise in PSA levels following treatment.
“The benefit of this demonstration is that we shorten the duration of therapy by more than two weeks,” said Sumanta Pal, MD, Assistant Professor of Medical Oncology at City of Hope. “And that may relieve many burdens, including economic costs and time costs to the patient. One of the traditional challenges with radiation therapy in prostate cancer is that it is administered over such an extended period of time. It becomes a real challenge for patients who come from long distances for their radiation treatment and certainly might compromise compliance.”
Cyberknife is an accepted treatment for prostate cancer and is delivered over a shorter period of time – 5 treatments vs. 28-41 treatments.
Contact CyberKnife Miami to learn how we treat prostate cancer painlessly and non-invasively with the CyberKnife® Robotic Radiosurgery System, a painless, nonsurgical cancer treatment technology in which high-dose radiation is delivered to the tumor from a linear accelerator mounted on a highly maneuverable robotic arm. 800-204-0455