Long-term versus short-term androgen deprivation combined with EBRT for unfavourable prostate cancer.

Abstract

Previous mature trials on long-term versus short-term androgen deprivation combined with external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) for prostate cancer were limited to conventional dose radiotherapy (65–70 Gy) leaving some uncertainty as to whether the same conclusions would apply with modern EBRT doses and techniques.1–3 In 2017,1 the 20-year follow-up of RTOG 9202 compared androgen deprivation for 4 months versus 28 months combined with conventional doses of EBRT of 65–70 Gy in 1554 men. Long-term androgen deprivation (LTAD) improved 15-year distant metastasis-free survival from 74·0% (95% CI 70·8–77·1) to 82·6% (79·8–85·3; p<0·0001), biochemical failure-free survival from 38·8% (95% CI 35·4–42·4) to 54·6% (51·0–58·2; p<0·0001), and disease-free survival from 10·0% (95% CI 6·8–12·4) to 15·7% (10·1–18·5).