Dr. Nabid on a Shorter Duration of ADT in Prostate Cancer

Abdenour Nabid, MD, associate professor at Centre Hospitalier de Universitaire de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Canada, discusses results of a phase III randomized study that compared 18 months of androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) to 36 months in men with high-risk, localized prostate cancer.

In the study, 630 patients were evenly randomized to 36 or 18 months of pelvic radiotherapy plus bicalutamide and goserelin. At a median follow-up of 77 months, the study found that both overall survival and disease-specific survival were not statistically different between the two arms.

Treatment with ADT may result in serious adverse events that make a patient's life miserable, Nabid points out. Shortening the duration of treatment could help alleviate some of these side effects and improve quality of life.

A more thorough analysis of quality of life is currently underway looking at patient-reported data from 9638 questionnaires. This analysis will provide further information on the impact of treatment duration on quality of life for men in this study.

<<<

View coverage from the 2013 GU Cancers Symposium