A fresh report from the national R...

A fresh report from the national Radiation Therapy Oncology cluster (RTOG) has found the first conclusive evidence that radiation therapy helps patients with localized prostate cancer live longer Prostate cancer, the principally common form of cancer in somewhat old men, tends to be a slow-growing disease that men repeatedly die with, not from. Knowing this, physicians frequently question whether surgery or radiation provides any real benefit for older patients, according to a pres release from the RTOG.

Researchers retrospectively examined the eventuates of 1,560 patients who received single radiation therapy for prostate cancer. Patients were treated between 1975 and 1995 in four separate trials guidanceed by the RTOG. Follow-up examinations occurr for an average of eight years, with a certain patients seen for as many as 12 years.

Researchers lay the foundation of that in dividing men into four categories according to the likelihood of having a more dangerous cancer, those with the worst prognoses benefited the greatest in number from receiving higher doses of radiation. After statistical adjustments for disease severity and age, researchers construct that patients who received higher than usual radiation doses were 32% les likely to die from prostate cancer.

Researchers also evaluated patients' Gleason scores--a way of grading the pathology of a cancer enclosed space Undifferentiated or poorly differentiated lonely dwellings are more abnormal and characteristic of more aggressive cancers. The higher the Gleason score, the poorer the patient's prognosis. After evaluating the scores and the varying radiation doses in four separate studies, they ground that, overall, patients with the highest Gleason scores (ie, between eight and 10 onward a scale of two to 10)--who should have had the worst prognoses and who received a higher radiation dose--had better local command of their cancer and were more likely to be disease-free and live longer

RTOG reflection Finds First Solid Evidence Radiation Therapy Saves Prostate Cancer Patients' Lives (`pres release, Radiation Therapy Ontology clump May 15, 1999) 1-2.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Association of Operating expanse Nurses, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group