HIFU has been a common primary prostate cancer treatment in Europe for quite a while. Currently, in the United States, there are a number of clinical trial sites evaluating HIFU as a primary treatment. Like all other primary treatments there is a significant failure rate causing men to move on to salvage therapy.
In Europe it isn’t uncommon for men who have failed HIFU treatment to undergo another course of HIFU as a salvage therapy.
At the Hôpital Universitaire Pellegrin, Bordeaux, researchers decided to evaluate an alternative, salvage radiotherapy (SRT) as a treatment following HIFU failure for localized prostate cancer.
From March 1995 to March 2008, all men who presented with histological proven persistent local disease following HIFU were treated with curative intent by salvage radiotherapy (with or without hormonal treatment). This study was a single-center retrospective study.
• All the men were given conformal radiotherapy with a median dose of 72 Gy (65-78 Gy).
• The primary outcome measure was progression-free survival (PFS), which was defined as no biochemical relapse (th