Effectiveness of Focal Therapy in Men With Prostate Cancer

In the Netherlands, most men with PCa are treated with radical whole-gland treatment, i.e. prostatectomy or a form of radiotherapy. The burden of complications such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction associated with radical treatment is considerable.

A recent systematic review by our group has shown that focal therapy of PCa seems to reduce the burden of treatment side-effects in men with intermediate-risk disease, maintaining their quality of life without compromising oncological effectiveness. The costs of side-effects that can be prevented are estimated at €5456 per patient, resulting in total expected cost savings of about €22 million per year in The Netherlands. Furthermore, exploration of the benefit-risk balance under patients showed that they are willing to sacrifice some survival for an improvement in quality of life (QoL).

Focal therapy comprises a modern alternative to selectively treat a specific part of the prostate while preserving the rest of the gland. There is, however, a lack of high-quality evidence, and numerous papers therefore recommend to perform a multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT). The RCT should have long-term follow-up, predefined assessment of cancer-specific and health-related QoL outcome measures, and economic evaluations to inform policymakers regarding cost-effectiveness. This RCT on focal therapy versus usual care is urgently needed to enable focal therapy to overgrow the experimental status, provide the evidence needed for guidelines, and make this available for selected patients who benefit from this strategy. Because of its promising results in other countries, focal therapy is increasingly requested by patients, but due to the lack of high-quality evidence, it is not reimbursed yet. This has been designated by both the PCa patient support group and physicians as a failure of both the market and the funding agencies.

At present, all devices that are used in the proposed study are CE approved and no safety issues were reported in IDEAL stage 1 and 2a studies. For high-risk PCa, local radical therapy has been found to significantly improve oncological endpoints. However, for low- and intermediate-risk localized PCa, the different recommended options by guidelines (radical prostatectomy (RP), radiotherapy (RT), or active surveillance (AS)) have similar short- to medium-term oncological outcomes in randomized studies. A PROZIB database search and a KWF report showed that about 65% of the intermediate-risk patients that are eligible for focal therapy currently undergo either RP or RT. Furthermore, brachytherapy is only used to a limited extent (7%) in intermediate-risk patients in the Netherlands, and since it is not offered as a treatment option in the participating hospitals in this proposal, the investigators do not include this option in our study.

Active surveillance is mainly used for low-risk patients rather than for the intermediate-risk patients the investigators are aiming for in this study. Our systematic review concluded that more high-quality evidence is required before focal therapy can become available as a standard treatment. The majority of focal therapy studies were prospective development IDEAL stage 2a studies (feasibility studies), showing the limited adverse impact on functional outcomes and favorable oncological outcomes. Overall, focal therapy studies reported a median of 95% pad-free at 1-year and 85% of the patients had no clinically significant cancer in the treated area, respectively. High-quality multi-center comparative clinical trials, however, appear to be lacking. The appropriate management of patients with recurrent PCa following focal therapy has been an ongoing point of discussion. Marra et al. showed that evidence from assessments of salvage treatments after focal therapy failure is low and is derived from four retrospective salvage series. Available salvage options after focal therapy include RP and RT. Overall oncological outcomes are acceptable, although biochemical recurrence is slightly higher compared to primary PCa treatment, probably because of the higher aggressiveness of recurrent/persistent PCa. Functional outcomes and complications are not markedly worse compared to primary treatment. Salvage RP and salvage RT, therefore, seem feasible treatment options with acceptable oncological control and functional outcomes. Thus, re-treatment with salvage radiotherapy or salvage surgery remains a clinical option after focal therapy failure. Experience from other countries and our qualitative research on this topic taught us that many patients will consciously opt for an initial focal therapy to maintain their quality of life and because they can be treated later when deemed necessary with the other options.