An Ontario-led international clinical trial with 1,206 men with localized prostate cancer shows that compressing radiation treatments into four weeks from eight delivers similar outcomes.
The findings, published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, provide a new standard of care worldwide, which the participating centres have already adopted.

“Using modern radiation therapy techniques that are very precise, we determined there was no noticeable difference between eight- and four-week treatment regimens in terms of cancer control or side effects of treatment," says Dr. Catton (radiation oncologist). "In fact, for some men, the shorter regimen meant slightly fewer side effects (particularly regarding bowel function) and therefore improved quality of life.

Clinicians applied Hypofractionated radiation therapy, which could be seem as a more aggressive treatment approach. In fact, Hypofractionated radiation therapy is given over a shorter period of time (fewer days or weeks) than standard radiation therapy because the total dose of radiation is divided into large doses and treatments are given once a day or less often. However, it seems that this approach is a new treatment standard approach for certain types of cancer.