Adjuvant Versus Early Salvage Radiation Therapy Following Radical Prostatectomy for Men with Localized Prostate Cancer

Abstract

Radical prostatectomy (RP) is now the most common definitive treatment for high-risk prostate cancer. Unfortunately, many men will have residual microscopic disease after surgery alone. Despite level 1 evidence supporting the use of adjuvant radiation therapy (ART), <10% of men with adverse pathology (positive margins or T3 disease) receive ART in the USA. Early salvage radiation therapy (eSRT) at the time of biochemical recurrence has been proposed as an alternative strategy despite the lack of published randomized trials to support this approach. Multiple randomized trials are ongoing or recently completed to compare ART to eSRT, but given the long natural history of prostate cancer, long-term oncologic outcomes from these trials will not be reported for several years. In this review, we discuss the shifting trends in the diagnosis of high-risk prostate cancer given a decline in PSA screening, use of RP for high-risk disease, and compare and contrast the retrospective and randomized evidence regarding ART and SRT.

Keywords: Adjuvant radiation; Prostate cancer; Prostate specific antigen (PSA) progression; Radiation therapy; Radical prostatectomy; Salvage radiation.