Practice-changing research from Cedars-Sinai Cancer shows that a combination of androgen deprivation therapy — a commonly used hormone injection — plus pelvic lymph node radiation, kept nearly 90% of clinical trial patients’ prostate cancer at bay for five years. The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal The Lancet.
The study also shows that patients with prostate cancer who didn’t receive androgen deprivation therapy — and who did not receive pelvic lymph node radiation — had a five-year survival of 70%.
“We can now confirm that pelvic lymph node treatment used together with androgen deprivation therapy, or even used as a stand-alone treatment option, greatly improves outcomes in patients with postoperative prostate cancer,” said Howard Sandler, MD, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Cancer and senior author of the study. “These findings are an encouraging step forward, both for the medical community and for the patients and their loved ones seeking curative treatment options.”
The international, Phase III clinical trial that served as the basis of The Lancet study, enrolled 1,716 patients between March 31, 2008, and March 30, 2015. Enrollees were separated into three groups.
Group one received salvage prostate bed radiotherapy — a standard radiation targeted to the area in which the prostate used to exist before its surgical removal. These patients had a median five-year survival of 71%.
The second group received the standard radiation treatment, in combination with androgen deprivation therapy. They had a median five-year survival of 81%.
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