The study is published in the Jan. 1 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

In this study, doctors at the Schiffler Cancer Center in Wheeling, W.Va., studied nearly 200 men with high-risk prostate cancer over eight years to see if adding external beam radiation and hormone therapy to brachytherapy increased disease-free survival rates.

After eight years, nearly 94 percent of the men who had hormone therapy in addition to the two types of radiation showed no evidence of prostate cancer, compared with 84 percent of the men who only had seed implants and external beam radiation therapy.