title: Prostate alpha/beta revisited -- an analysis of clinical results from 14 168 patients.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To determine the dose response parameters and the fractionation sensitivity of prostate tumours from clinical results of patients treated with external beam radiotherapy.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study was based on five-year biochemical results from 14 168 patients treated with external beam radiotherapy. Treatment data from 11 330 patients treated with conventional fractionation have been corrected for overall treatment time and fitted with a logit equation. The results have been used to determine the optimum α/β values that minimise differences in predictions from 2838 patients treated with hypofractionated schedules.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Conventional fractionation data yielded logit dose response parameters for all risk groups and for all definitions of biochemical failures. The analysis of hypofractionation data led to very low α/β values (1-1.7 Gy) in all mentioned cases. Neglecting the correction for overall treatment time has little impact on the derivation of α/β values for prostate cancers.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results indicate that the high fractionation sensitivity is an intrinsic property of prostate carcinomas and they support the use of hypofractionation to increase the therapeutic gain for these tumours.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Physics UHL, County Council of Östergötland, Linköping, Sweden. alexandru.dasu@lio.se
authors.forename: Alexandru
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dasu
authors.forename: Iuliana
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Toma-Dasu
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood*; D019583:Dose Fractionation, Radiation; D004307:Dose-Response Relationship, Radiation; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen / Q000097:blood*; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000276:immunology / Q000532:radiotherapy*; D020266:Radiotherapy, Conformal / Q000379:methods*; D017211:Treatment Failure; D016896:Treatment Outcome
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen