Real-world utilisation of brachytherapy boost and patient-reported functional outcomes in men who had external beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer in Australia

Population‐based patient‐reported quality of life outcomes following low‐dose‐rate versus high‐dose‐rate brachytherapy monotherapy for low‐intermediate risk prostate cancer

“…Reassuringly, regardless of baseline urinary function scores, all men who had either LDR‐BT or HDR‐BT monotherapy in Victoria had excellent urinary function domain score 12‐month post‐treatment, comparable to multiple earlier series on LDR‐BT 18,19 or HDR‐BT 20–22 . The urinary function scores at 12 months after LDR‐BT or HDR‐BT monotherapy in this study were also comparable to men who had external beam radiation therapy with BT boost in previous PCOR‐Vic study 23 (Table 4). On the other hand, it is unknown whether men who had LDR‐BT and HDR‐BT had comparable baseline sexual function score, 24 given that pre‐treatment sexual (dys)function is generally not a selection or exclusion criteria for LDR‐BT or HDR‐BT.…”

“…This resulted in a wide range of confidence intervals in the EPIC‐26 domains score differences, with the lower confidence interval crossing the MCID for all functional domains (Table 3). While the overall number of patients who had HDR‐BT was much lower than LDR‐BT in this study, it is important to recognise that HDR‐BT is most commonly given as boost with external beam radiation therapy in Victoria, 23 and the total caseload for HDR‐BT (either as monotherapy or boost) was similar to LDR‐BT in Victoria over the study period. Nonetheless, as with any procedural skills, BT implant is highly operator‐dependent with caseload‐outcomes relationship, and earlier studies have shown decline in the acute urinary toxicities rates following BT with increased institutional experience 27,28 .…”

A Systematic Review of Population-Based Studies of Chronic Bowel Symptoms in Cancer Survivors following Pelvic Radiotherapy

“…Hand searches identified two additional eligible citations. Therefore, 45 papers from 19 datasets were included [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. Characteristics of individual papers, and associated populations, are presented in Supplementary Tables S2 and S3 , respectively.…”

“…Papers reported on datasets from nine countries: USA ( n = 5 datasets; n = 20 papers) [ 16 , 20 , 21 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 35 , 40 , 43 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 52 , 53 , 56 , 57 , 59 ], Australia ( n = 4 datasets of which n = 1 reported with New Zealand; n = 5 papers) [ 17 , 38 , 44 , 51 , 54 ]; the Netherlands ( n = 2 datasets; n = 2 papers) [ 39 , 58 ], Sweden ( n = 2 datasets; n = 6 papers) [ 15 , 18 , 19 , 24 , 25 , 55 ], the United Kingdom ( n = 2 datasets; n = 6 papers) [ 22 , 37 , 42 , 45 , 46 , 47 ], Denmark ( n = 1 dataset; n = 1 paper) [ 41 ], Ireland and Northern Ireland ( n = 1 dataset reported together; n = 2 papers) [ 23 , 27 ], Finland ( n = 1 dataset; n = 1 paper) [ 36 ], and Norway ( n = 1 dataset; n = 2 papers) [ 26 , 34 ]. A total...…”

“…In total, 22 papers ( n = 12 datasets) reported cross-sectional analyses [ 15 , 18 , 19 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 29 , 30 , 34 , 36 , 39 , 42 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 51 , 55 , 58 ] and 23 papers ( n = 9 datasets; all prostate) reported longitudinal analyses [ 16 , 17 , 20 , 21 , 28 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 35 , 37 , 38 , 40 , 41 , 43 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 56 , 57 , 59 ]. Seven different previously validated outcome measurement tools were used ( Supplementary Table S4 ): Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (EPIC)-26 ( n = 23 papers) [ 16 , 17 , 21 , 22 , 26 , ...…”