Combined, Intensified and Modulated Adjuvant Therapy in Prostate Carcinoma

Prostate cancer patients at high risk of loco-regional recurrences may benefit from postoperative radiotherapy (RT) following radical prostatectomy (EORTC trial 22911). However, despite an improvement in biochemical relapse-free survival (bRFS), the risk of recurrences remained high for those patients. The investigators postulated that adjuvant androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), radiation dose escalation, and selective pelvic irradiation for patients at risk for regional failures may improve the outcome. The combined-intensified-modulated-adjuvant (CIMA) as described may improve survival through a reduction of loco-regional and systemic failures. A phase II trial was designed to test the hypothesis that CIMA treatment may improve 5-year bRFS by 15%. Patients less than 80 years old, with a histological diagnosis of prostate adenocarcinoma without distant metastases, stage pT2-4 N0-1, no previous treatments and an ECOG performance status of 0-2 were selected. All patients had at least one of these pathologic features: extracapsular extension, positive surgical margins, or seminal vesicle invasion. Radiation dose to the tumor bed ranged from 64.8 to 70.2 Gy. Pelvic lymph nodes were treated to 45 Gy in selected patients at risk of regional failures (57%). Selected patients at risk for distant metastases (69.1%) received hormonal therapy.