Radiation therapy margin reduction for patients with localized prostate cancer: A prospective study of the dosimetric impact and quality of life

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Abstract Objectives To investigate the impact of reducing Clinical Target Volume (CTV) to Planning Target Volume (PTV) margins on delivered radiation therapy (RT) dose and patient reported quality‐of‐life (QOL) for patients with localized prostate cancer. Methods Twenty patients were included in a single institution IRB‐approved prospective study. Nine were planned with reduced margins (4 mm at prostate/rectum interface, 5 mm elsewhere), and 11 with standard margins (6/10 mm). Cumulative delivered dose was calculated using deformable dose accumulation. Each daily CBCT dataset was deformed to the planning CT (pCT), dose was computed, and accumulated on the resampled pCT using a parameter‐optimized, B‐spline algorithm (Elastix, ITK/VTK). EPIC‐26 patient reported QOL was prospectively collected pre‐treatment, post‐treatment, and at 2‐, 6‐, 12‐, 18‐, 24‐, 36‐, 48‐, and 60‐month follow‐ups. Post ‐RT QOL scores were baseline corrected and standardized to a [0–100] scale using EPIC‐26 methodology. Correlations between QOL scores and dosimetric parameters were investigated, and the overall QOL differences between the two groups (QOLMargin‐reduced‐QOLcontrol) were calculated. Results The median QOL follow‐up length for the 20 patients was 48 months. Difference between delivered dose and planned dose did not reach statistical significance (p > 0.1) for both targets and organs at risk between the two groups. At 4 years post‐RT, standardized mean QOLMargin‐reduced‐QOLcontrol were improved for Urinary Incontinence, Urinary Irritative/Obstructive, Bowel, and Sexual EPIC domains by 3.5, 14.8, 10.2, and 16.1, respectively (higher values better). The control group showed larger PTV/rectum and PTV/bladder intersection volumes (7.2 ± 5.8, 18.2 ± 8.1 cc) than the margin‐reduced group (2.6 ± 1.8, 12.5 ± 8.3 cc), though the dose to these intersection volumes did not reach statistical significance (p > 0.1) between the groups. PTV/rectum intersection volume showed a moderate correlation (r = −0.56, p < 0.05) to Bowel EPIC domain. Conclusions Results of this prospective study showed that margin‐reduced group exhibited clinically meaningful improvement of QOL without compromising the target dose coverage.

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