Combined internal and external radiation plus hormone therapy improves disease-free survival with high-risk prostate cancer compared with combined radiation alone, according to an article in the January 1st issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics.

Since the late 1980s, brachytherapy has been used increasingly to treat prostate cancer. For patients with higher risk prostate cancers - defined as having at least two of the following three: a high Gleason score, a high prostate-specific antigen score, and/or advanced stage - doctors have been adding hormone therapy and external beam radiation therapy to the treatment plan to try to increase survival rates.

In the current study, researchers studied nearly 200 men with high-risk prostate cancer over eight years to see if adding external beam radiation and hormone therapy to brachytherapy did indeed increase disease-free survival rates.

Of the participating patients, 107 men were treated with combined brachytherapy and external beam radiation therapy. An additional 69 patients received hormone therapy in addition to internal and external radiation.

After eight years, nearly 94 percent of men who had hormone therapy in addition to the two types of radiation had no evidence of their prostate cancer compared with 84 percent of men who only had brachytherapy plus external beam radiation therapy.

“This is an exciting study because it shows that adding hormone treatment and external beam radiation therapy to seed implants does indeed help men with high-risk prostate cancer to live longer without the cancer returning,” said Gregory S. Merrick, MD, lead author of the study.