Publications by authors named "B Caraffini"
Background/aim: Low dose rate brachytherapy has been used as salvage therapy for locally recurrent prostate cancer (PC) after primary external beam radiation therapy (EBRT), along with surgery and cryotherapy. All these techniques, in particular, when applied to the whole gland, involve a relatively high risk of toxicity and may worsen the patient's quality of life. Our aim is to evaluate the results of whole-gland salvage brachytherapy (SBT) after primary EBRT in terms of toxicity, functional outcomes, and efficacy.
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- The study looked at how well patients do after treatment for prostate cancer, focusing on survival rates and side effects.
- It involved 258 patients who had radiation therapy and found that starting treatment sooner leads to better outcomes.
- The newer, more advanced radiation techniques caused fewer side effects compared to older methods.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of postoperative radiotherapy in reducing the incidence of prostate carcinoma (PCa) recurrences after radical prostatectomy (RP), define the importance of the time interval between surgery and radiotherapy for prognosis and the toxicity of the treatment in comparison with radiotherapy or surgery alone.
Materials And Methods: We examined 97 patients who consecutively underwent postoperative radiotherapy after RP between 1980 and 2003. The treatment was considered "adjuvant" if was conducted less than 6 months after RP, if there was no macroscopic residual disease and if there was no progressive increase in serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and "salvage" if performed more than 6 months after RP, for the presence of macroscopic recurrence or with rising PSA.
Aims: To contribute to the available evidence about the efficacy of exclusive radiotherapy for bladder cancer through a retrospective analysis of a large series of patients consecutively treated in a single institution.
Materials And Methods: A total of 459 patients with UICC categories T1-T4, N0-Nx and M0 bladder cancer consecutively treated with radiotherapy alone with radical intent formed the clinical basis for this study. Many of them (and particularly the T1 cases) had poor medical conditions or were unfit for surgery.