External beam radiation therapy and brachytherapy boost versus radical prostatectomy and adjuvant radiation therapy for high-risk prostate cancer.

21 Background: Previous studies have suggested that combination external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) with brachytherapy boost (BT) for high-risk prostate cancer is associated with equivalent overall survival (OS) compared with radical prostatectomy (RP). However, it is not known whether RP with post-operative radiation therapy (PORT) can offer improved OS compared with combination RT (EBRT + BT + androgen deprivation therapy [ADT]) for patients with Gleason 9-10 high-risk disease. Methods: We identified all patients diagnosed with clinical T1-T3, Gleason 9-10, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) 0-40 ng/mL, and clinically node negative disease between 2004 and 2014 from the National Cancer Database. We divided patients into 4 treatment groups: EBRT + ADT, combination RT (EBRT + BT + ADT), RP, and RP + PORT. Only patients who received PORT within 360 days of surgery were included within the RP + PORT group. We compared OS utilizing inverse probability of treatment-weighted multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression modeling after accounting for clinical and demographic factors, including Gleason grade (9 versus 10), T-stage (T1, T2, T3), age, Charlson-Deyo comorbidity score (0, 1, versus 2), education quartile, income quartile, geographic location within the US, insurance status, facility volume, and race. Results: Median follow-up in the entire cohort was 4.5 years. The numbers of patients treated with EBRT + ADT, EBRT + BT + ADT, RP, RP + PORT were 6778, 924, 7111, and 1929, respectively. There were no significant differences in 5-year OS when comparing combination RT to RP (85.0% vs 85.7%, adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) 0.92, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.77-1.10, p = 0.36) or RP + PORT (85.0% vs 85.6%, AHR 0.89, 95% CI 0.71-1.12, p = 0.34). Combination RT was associated with superior 5-year OS compared to EBRT + ADT alone (without BT boost) (85.0% vs 79.4%, AHR 1.26, 95% CI 1.07-1.48, p < 0.01). Conclusions: Our study suggests that for patients with Gleason 9-10 tumors, multi-modality surgical therapy is equivalent to combination RT.