[Low dose brachytherapy with seeds--an interdisciplinary therapy alternative to radical prostatectomy]

Prostate cancer is together with the carcinoma of the lung the most common cancer in the western world. Better screening methods especially the introduction of PSA (prostate specific antigen) in the beginning of the 90's has increased the early detection rate. In the United States only 30% of prostate tumors were in their early stages before the introduction of PSA-screening as compared to 60% nowadays. The early detection also increased the rate of younger men amongst these patients. Patient demands have increased with respect to incontinence and impotence especially amongst those young patients. Radical prostatectomy still is the gold standard for therapy of localized prostate cancer. Better operating techniques have decreased the side effect rate of this operations but many patients still do not undergo this operation because they fear these side effects. Originating from the USA the low dose rate brachytherapy (LDR) using permanent seeds had a renaissance in recent years. In 1999 alone more than 40,000 patients were successfully operated using this technique. 10 year data published in 1998 showed similar results as compared to a multitude of radical prostatectomy studies and superior results to most of the published external beam studies with significantly less side effects. In Germany and western Europe more and more centers start with LDR-brachytherapy. In contrary to the U.S. where brachytherapy is mostly performed as an outpatient procedure, nearly all European centers do only inpatient brachytherapy. Only very few centers perform outpatient procedures; the first results are very encouraging showing few complications and a very high standard of quality of the treatment.