Image Guided Radiation Therapy May Improve Outcomes

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2009) � Moderately to severely obese prostate cancer patients may have improved treatment outcomes when treated with image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) over traditional external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) because IGRT corrects for prostate shifts, which, if not planned for, can lead to incorrect doses of radiation to the disease site, according to a study in the September 1 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

Several studies have suggested that obesity can lead to higher rates of clinical recurrence or biochemical failure rates in prostate cancer patients receiving EBRT. Researchers at the Carol G. Simon Cancer Center, Morristown Memorial Hospital in Morristown, N.J., and the Uematsu-Atsuchi-Serendipity Oncology Center in Terukuni, Kagoshima, Japan, sought to determine if these failure rates were caused by the treatment modality used rather than strictly the fact that the patients were obese.