The American Society of Clinical Oncology recently held their annual conference, and it has generated a lott of buzz in the online PC community. There is so much news coming out of this meeting, it is overloading my mailbox. So I will try to present a few of these stories as best as I can.
The following article touts the benefits of *adjuvant radiation therapy,* after RP, *even for higher-risk patients*: It is called: High-Risk Disease After Radical Retropublic Prostatectomy: The Case for Adjuvant External Beam Radiation Therapy.
First of all, let me explain some terms. “Adjuvant Radiation” is radiation therapy (RT) given after surgery but before there has been any noticeable rise in the patient’s PSA level. It is essentially a prophylactic measure. “Salvage Radiation,” on the other hand, is administered after the patient’s PSA has begun to rise.
I posted an article some time ago urging patients to explore the potential benefits of adding radiation to surgery (see “Consider Adding Rad to Surgery”), and this new report underscores my point. It goes so far as to say that even for high-risk cases, adjuvant radiation (XRT) may confer a significant benefit. Last time I investigated this, I kept on reading about XRT being “underutilized,” in spite of its proven value. Well, this needs to change.
It had been thought that radiation after surgery wo