Long-term results with immediate androgen suppression and external irradiation in patients with locally advanced prostate cancer (an EORTC study): a phase III randomised trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Goserelin.

The researchers did a randomised phase III trial comparing external irradiation alone and external irradiation combined with an analogue of luteinising-hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) to investigate the added value of long-term androgen suppression in locally advanced prostate cancer.

Who Took Part

The study group was 1995, patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, men only.

Between 1987 and 1995, 415 patients were randomly assigned radiotherapy alone or radiotherapy plus immediate androgen suppression.

Eligible patients had T1-2 tumours of WHO grade 3 or T3-4 N0-1 M0 tumours; the median age of participants was 71 years (range 51-80).

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Goserelin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

The methods mention a period of 5 weeks.

In both treatment groups, 50 Gy radiation was delivered to the pelvis over 5 weeks, and 20 Gy over 2 weeks as a prostatic boost.

The primary endpoint was clinical disease-free survival.

Analyses were by intention to treat.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Antineoplastic Agents, Hormonal, Disease-Free Survival, Goserelin and Prostatic Neoplasms.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Goserelin in 1995, patients over 5 weeks.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 2 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2002 (Lancet (London, England)), a journal based in England.

More context: the Goserelin compound page.