Treatment of Bone Metastases with Radium-223 in Patients with Castration Resistant Prostate Cancer (CRPC): Alternative or Complementary to Innovative Molecular Therapies?

The skeletal metastatic disease is a real clinical problem. Approximately 70% of patients with prostate or breast cancer and 35% of those with advanced lung, thyroid, and kidney cancers will develop skeletal metastases, which cause considerable morbidity. Several options are available for treatment, to be used either alone or in various combinations: hormones in case of hormone-sensitive tumours, chemotherapy, biphosphonates, external beam radiation therapy, surgery (in pathologic or impending fracture), bone-seeking radiopharmceuticals, and also molecular therapies. Focusing our attention to patients with prostate cancer, 50% of patients with bone metastases develop skeletal related events (SREs) such as: severe pain, pathologic fractures, spinal compression syndrome, malignant hypercalcemia, bone marrow suppression. All these SREs require adequate therapy since generally determine several functional impairments and worsen the prognosis. It is well known that skeletal complications reduce the quality of life affecting different aspects, physical, functional end emotional. SREs are associated also with lower survival