CyberKnife® prostate radiosurgery effectively addresses shortcomings of other treatments for early stage prostate cancer. It is less invasive, with faster recovery than radical prostatectomy, vastly shorter in duration and with sharper treatment margins compared with external beam radiotherapy, potentially less urologically traumatic and obstructive than permanent source brachytherapy, and less invasive than HDR brachytherapy.
Though our specific CyberKnife® prostate radiosurgery fractionation schedule matches a peer-reviewed, published effective HDR brachytherapy monotherapy schedule (9), even that reference study may be criticized for its 35 month median follow-up, and there is still very little clinical experience with this hypofractionation schedule compared with standard protracted radiotherapeutic approaches. Because of this, for the foreseeable future, we will be offering CyberKnife® prostate radiosurgery monotherapy under a prospective IRB approved clinical trial, limited to favorable and selected intermediate prognosis patients.
Reprinted with permission from Accuray
Written by Donald B. Fuller, M.D. – Radiation Oncologist