Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 9, 2025
Proton Therapy Delivery and Its Clinical Application in Select Solid Tumor Malignancies
Published on: February 6, 2019
Patient Reported Quality of Life Outcomes After Definitive Radiation Therapy With Absorbable Spacer Hydrogel for
Neil B Newman1, Anne Rajkumar1, Ryan K Cleary1
1Department of Radiation Oncology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee.
Purpose:
SpaceOAR is a device approved for conventional radiation in prostate cancer. We sought to observe prospectively how SpaceOAR Hydrogel effected quality of life and dosimetry to organs at risk at our institution.
Methods And Materials:
We prospectively enrolled patients with low risk or favorable-intermediate risk localized prostate cancer. Baseline Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (EPIC-26) scores along with baseline American Urology Association Symptom Index (AUA-SI) scores were collected. SpaceOAR was placed for all patients who then received stereotactic body radiation therapy, low dose rate brachytherapy, conventionally fractionated radiation therapy, or moderately hypofractionated radiation therapy. We evaluated postimplant dosimetry to critical structures, and prospectively collected follow-up EPIC-26 and AUA-SI scores. We performed a repeated measures analysis of variance to compare patient-specific responses and correlated survey data with dosimetric metrics by generating linear regression models.
Results:
We enrolled 59 patients in this study with a median follow-up of 366 days (interquartile range, 507). At final follow-up, the "?>prostate-specific antigen had a significant decline compared with baseline (P < .0001). There were no grade 3 toxicities on treatment. There were no significant changes in the AUA-SI score (P = .69) at final follow-up compared with baseline, nor was there any change in EPIC-26 domain scores (P = .19) during the course of the study period. There were no significant associations between AUA scores and EPIC-26 scores and the dose to the rectum, bladder, or urethra with the exception being dose to the 2 mL rectum correlated with decline in EPIC-26 rectal score (β, -0.002; P = .006). Patient-reported declines in bowel domains were less than previously reported data.
Conclusions:
Use of SpaceOAR results in favorable dosimetry to the organs at risk and portends excellent short-term quality of life as measured by the association with the patient reported outcome measures. Longer-term follow-up is ongoing and necessary to assess the long-term effect and association of the hydrogel.
