Prophylactic pelvic girdle irradiation in the treatment of prostatic carcinoma

This is a report of a pilot study of the effectiveness of irradiation therapy to the pelvic girdle in decreasing the incidence of bony metastases in patients with prostatic cancer. Thirty-two patients were entered in the study; none of them failed in the pelvic bones and four failed outside the pelvis. A total tumor dose of 6800 rad was delivered, the pelvic nodes received 5000 rad and the pelvic girdle 800 rad. The non-conventional fractionation scheme used in this study diminishes the incidence of osseous metastases but produces unacceptable bowel injury. Forty-three percent of patients had proctitis and 20% of the patients required colostomy