High Dose Rate (HDR) Brachytherapy Boost and Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) for Intermediate Risk Prostate Cancer: Phase II Clinical Trial.

The treatment of prostate cancer has evolved significantly over the recent years. Evidence suggests high dose of radiation improves disease control outcomes, and brachytherapy is the most effective way of doing this, providing high doses to the prostate, while minimizing dose to surrounding normal tissues. Previous clinical trials funded by Ride for Dad have helped establish a single high dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy treatment with 15 external beam treatments over 3 weeks as standard of care. The next question is: can we compress this further? Very short radiation treatments involving just 5 treatments using a technique called stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT or SABR) has been shown to be safe and effective. We hope to demonstrate that 5 treatments using SBRT can replace the 15 external beam treatments we currently use. We will test a protocol of single HDR brachytherapy treatment combined with 5 SBRT treatments given over one week, which we hope will be able to replace the current 3-week course of treatment.