Most Common Treatment for Prostate Cancer Not Best Value

External beam radiation is the most toxic and expensive among common prostate cancer treatments over the long-term, a national registry study suggested.

Although it's one of the most common treatments for Medicare patients with prostate cancer, external beam radiation had the highest 16-year cumulative risk of serious gastrointestinal and genitourinary problems compared with surgery and brachytherapy, Jay Ciezki, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, and colleagues found.

External beam radiation also cost twice as much as either of the other treatments when adding up initial treatment plus management of complications, he reported at a press briefing ahead of presentation at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium here.

The average cost per patient-year was $6,412 with external radiation versus $3,206 with open prostatectomy and $2,557 for brachytherapy (P<0.0001).

Read more about this study at: http://tinyurl.com/83qzpsx

Source: MedPage Today