PURPOSE External beam radiotherapy may be given after radical prostatectomy as adjuvant (immediate) or therapeutic (delayed) treatment, the latter in response to evidence of disease recurrence. In patients receiving delayed radiotherapy the necessity of a positive anastomotic biopsy before treatment remains unclear. We determined whether a positive anastomotic biopsy predicted the response to r...

BACKGROUND Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging is routinely used in many cancer types, although is not yet a standard modality for prostate carcinoma. Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) PET is a promising new modality for staging prostate cancer, with recent studies showing potential advantages over traditional computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nuclear...

Background: To correct patient positioning errors (setup errors) during prostate cancer treatment using EPID and fiducial gold markers, to improve the accuracy of the dose delivery in these patients. Materials and Methods: Fifteen patients with localized prostate carcinoma after implantation of fiducial gold markers in their prostate gland underwent the five-field IMRT planning technique. The p...

Study Objective. To evaluate the space creation, maintenance and absorption of an absorbable hydrogel injected into the perirectal space of patients prior to undergoing prostate radiotherapy. Design. CT or MR imaging performed before hydrogel application (Baseline), one week after hydrogel application, following 8 weeks of IMRT (78Gy total) and then again 6 months following implantation. Settin...

INTRODUCTION Prostate cancer is the most frequent cancer among males in Europe and a leading cause of cancer deaths, with similar proportion in other developed countries. For more than twenty years, external-beam radiation therapy, alongside with radical prostatectomy, has been used as a primary radical therapeutic approach for localized prostate cancer. Yet, EBRT failures relate to 22-69% foll...

Early studies indicated that mast cells in prostate tumor microenvironment might influence prostate cancer (PCa) progression. Their impacts to PCa therapy, however, remained unclear. Here we found PCa could recruit more mast cells than normal prostate epithelial cells then alter PCa chemotherapy and radiotherapy sensitivity, leading to PCa more resistant to these therapies. Mechanism dissection...

The aim of the study was to compare the spontaneous and ex vivo radiation-induced chromosomal damage in lymphocytes of untreated prostate cancer patients and age-matched healthy donors, and to evaluate the chromosomal damage, induced by radiotherapy, and its persistence. Blood samples from 102 prostate cancer patients were obtained before radiotherapy to investigate the excess acentric fragment...

Introduction Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) is becoming an increasingly routine treatment method. IMRT can be delivered by use of conventional Multileaf Collimators (MLCs) and/or physical compensators. One of the most important factors in selecting an appropriate IMRT technique is integral dose. Integral dose is equal to the mean energy deposited in the total irradiated volume of the p...

PURPOSE The aim of this work was to prospectively analyze the outcome of combined hormonal treatment and radical radiotherapy in high risk non metastatic prostate cancer patients (T1=4, N0-1, M0). METHODS Between April 2003 and December 2007 196 patients with high risk prostate cancer were treated with curative intent. The treatment consisted of 2-month neoadjuvant hormonal treatment (LHRH an...

BACKGROUND To determine prostate displacement during extreme hypofractionated volume modulated arc radiotherapy (VMAT) using pre- and post-treatment orthogonal images with three implanted gold seed fiducial markers. METHODS A total of 150 image pairs were obtained from 30 patients who underwent extreme hypofractionated radiotherapy to a dose of 40 Gy in five fractions on standard linear accel...