Prostate-specific antigen. An important marker for prostate cancer treated by external beam radiation therapy

Abstract

Pretreatment serum PSA level is the single most significant predictor of disease outcome after radiation therapy for local-regional prostate cancer. Moreover, postirradiation PSA values may potentially serve as an early endpoint to evaluate treatment efficacy. Using a rising posttreatment PSA profile as an index of treatment failure reveals that total and permanent eradication of prostate cancer with radiation therapy alone is not achieved as often as previously believed and that multimodal treatment approaches to prognostically unfavorable early stage disease need investigation.