It is an evolving, never-ending debate as to whether adding ADT improves the survival benefit for patients getting radio-therapy (RT) for prostate cancer. For this study the authors analyzed previously collected data in the US National Cancer Data Base on 18,598 men. The authors found the addition of ADT to RT was not associated with prolonged survival. They acknowledged that older studies have reported otherwise. But, not all those studies focused on the precise population of intermediate-risk patients examined here. Nor did all those older studies use the same RT treatment protocol reported on here. We see the question of the benefit of neo-adjuvant ADT for patients getting RT as something of a moving target. Its benefit may depend on precise details of the cancer stage and comorbidities of each individual patient.
Falchook AD, Basak R, Mohiuddin JJ, Chen RC. 2016. Evaluation of the effectiveness of adding androgen deprivation to modern dose-escalated radiotherapy for men with favorable intermediate-risk prostate cancer. Cancer 122(15):2341-2349. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27191936