Early biochemical outcomes following permanent interstitial brachytherapy as monotherapy in 1050 patients with clinical T1–T2 prostate cancer

Background and purposeFive European centres (France, Finland, Italy, Spain and the UK) have pooled data to generate a large patient series involving 1175 patients treated with prostate brachytherapy. This paper reports preliminary data on PSA outcome up to 4 years.Patients and methodsOut of 1175 in the database, 1050 patients with localised prostate cancer who had received transperineal seed implantation as monotherapy between May 1998 and August 2003 were stage T1–T2. A total of 668 (63.6%) patients met the low-risk group definition, 297 (28.3%) as intermediate-risk definition and 66 (6.3%) the high-risk group definition. The majority of patients were Gleason score 6 or less (n = 951) and disease stage was T1c in 557 patients.ResultsOf the 1050 patients, PSA data up to 4 years were available for 210 patients, while 364 patients with PSA values up to 36 months were evaluable by the Kaplan–Meier method for freedom from biochemical failure. The biochemical progression-free rate at 3 years was estimated to be 91%, with a 93% and 88% rate for low- and intermediate-risk groups, respectively, versus 80% for the high-risk group. PSA kinetics provide encouraging evidence of treatment efficacy.ConclusionThese data on 4-year PSA follow-up on patients treated with prostate brachytherapy reflect those previously reported in the literature. This patient series will be followed to provide long-term outcome in the future.