High-precision radiotherapy for prostate cancer 'shows promise'

Conclusion This study shows some promising results for targeted pelvic lymph node radiotherapy for men with advanced localised prostate cancer. However, these results can only be treated as preliminary findings for now. This was an early-stage trial that aimed to investigate whether the treatment approach is safe and to get an idea of what doses may be suitable for assessment in further trials. Although it can give an indication of effectiveness, this was not the main aim of the study. Men were not randomised to a treatment group, which means there may have been some differences in the cancers or patient characteristics of men who received the different radiation dosages. This could, in turn, have impacted how effective the treatment was and makes it hard to know at this stage what the optimal approach to delivering this treatment would be – which dose is the best, for example. All men in the study also received some kind of pelvic lymph node radiotherapy, which means it's not possible to say how effective PLN-IMRT is compared with more conventional treatment approaches. This research gives us a potential new treatment to investigate for men with locally advanced prostate cancer. Further trials looking more precisely at the effectiveness of this treatment are already in progress. However, it will be some time before it's known whether this could become a standard treatment option in the future. Links To The Headlines Targeted radiotherapy 'cures' prostate cancer that kills...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Cancer Source Type: news