Prostate history has no effect on outcome

DUNMORE, Pa., Jan. 2 (UPI) -- A family history of prostate cancer has no impact on treatment outcomes of patients treated with brachytherapy, or seed implants, a U.S. researcher said.

Lead author Dr. Christopher A. Peters of Northeast Radiation Oncology Center in Dunmore, Pa., who completed the research while chief resident at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said the researchers sought to determine if having a familial history of prostate cancer, which is defined as a clustering of prostate cancer cases within a family, had an impact on the prognosis of men treated with brachytherapy for clinically localized prostate cancer patients.

They tracked 1,738 prostate cancer patients, of which 187 had a family history of prostate cancer in a first-degree relative, for a median follow-up time of 60 months.

The study, published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, found that in the low-, intermediate- and high-risk groups, a family history of prostate cancer had little to no prognostic significance in men treated with brachytherapy.

"Now patients with a family history of prostate cancer can be confident that they have the same outcomes as patients with sporadic disease, regardless of the treatment modality they chose," Peters said in a statement.