Prostate brachytherapy

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of centres, especially in the USA, using prostate brachytherapy as a means of treating localised prostate cancer. Several centres now have medium term follow up data of large numbers of patients treated with this technique suggesting that outcome in terms of tumour control may be comparable to patients treated surgically. This review summarises results from different brachytherapy series and outlines some of the possible advantages of this technique compared with current conventional treatments for localised prostate cancer.