Purpose of review: Focal radiotherapy treatment procedures play an increasingly important role in function-preservation and organ-preservation treatment techniques. As an alternative to traditional whole-gland radiotherapy regimes, focal prostate radiotherapy may be of benefit for both primary tumor as well as locally recurrent disease. This is a review of the current literature on the topic, including patient selection, preliminary toxicity, and outcome data as well as a technical overview on treatment delivery techniques.
Recent findings: Partial organ treatment in early prostate cancer (PCa) is now technically feasible with both newer external-beam and brachytherapy technology. To date, only small and generally monoinstitutional series have been published in the literature. Early feasibility and toxicity data are encouraging, and demonstrate potential advantages for the role of focal brachytherapy in early PCa. Although some advanced external-beam techniques can also be used to deliver focal therapy within the prostate, there is no relevant publication in the literature.
Summary: Radiotherapy, especially interventional radiotherapy (brachytherapy), is a technically feasible treatment technique to deliver focal radiotherapy for PCa. To date, only preliminary results are available for all forms of interventional radiotherapy (high dose rate, low dose rate, and pulsed dose rate) for focal PCa treatment and no large cohort comparative results are published. As interventional radiotherapy (brachytherapy) as yet lacks any such long-term studies, comparative outcome data are not available to suggest differences in efficacy for one form of brachytherapy or another.