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Short-Course Radiotherapy Shows Promise for Prostate, Breast Cancers at ASTRO 2010 annual meeting to be held on 31st October - November 4th, 2010 in San Diego.

A shorter, cheaper, and more convenient three- to five-week course of radiation appears to work as well or better than the traditional six- to eight-week schedule for some patients with prostate and breast cancer, according to three studies presented here at the American Society for Radiation Oncology ( ASTRO 2010 ) Annual Meeting.

Giorgio Arcangeli, MD, a radiation oncologist at the Regina Elena National Cancer Institute in Rome, Italy, who headed one of the prostate cancer studies, explained that although recent improvements in radiation delivery techniques made it possible to increase the radiation dose given to cancer patients and to increase cure rates, the increase in total dose was obtained by increasing the number of treatment sessions to six, seven, or even eight weeks, which, of course, adds to inconvenience and cost.

Hypofractionated radiotherapy, though, offers a more convenient alternative, delivering higher doses of radiation in fewer treatments than conventional radiotherapy.

In Dr. Arcangeli's study, high-risk prostate cancer patients who received the shorter treatment course were significantly less likely to suffer a biochemical recurrence at three years than patients who underwent conventional treatment.

A second study, led by Alan Pollack, MD, PhD, Chair of Radiation Oncology at the University of Miami, showed no significant difference in five-year biochemical recurrence rates in men with intermediate- and high-risk prostate cancer randomized to receive hypofractionated or standard radiotherapy.In the third, single-arm, study, none of the first 121 women with early-stage breast cancer treated with a hypofractionated radiotherapy technique has suffered a local recurrence during the first two-and-one-half years of follow-up. Importantly, hypofractionation was not associated with a significant increase in toxicity in any of the trials, all the researchers said.

Source: ASTRO

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