Evaluation of the palliative benefit and toxicity of Ra-223 treatment of men with hormone refractory prostate cancer in a community setting.

225 Background: The ALSYMCA (Alpharadin in Symptomatic Prostate Cancer) trial was a phase III, placebo controlled, randomized trial in which 921 men with bone metastasis from hormone refractory prostate cancer (HRPC) were randomly assigned to receive radium-223 (Ra-223) or placebo. Ra-223 produced a 30% survival benefit, with a median survival of 14.9 months compared to 11.3 months for patients treated with a placebo, which led to FDA approval in 2013. Methods: We identified through the nuclear medicine records 11 patients who started Ra-223 between March 15, 2013 and December 10, 2015. The Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to compare the published results of the ALSYMPCA patients with those from our institution. Results: The Hodges-Lehman estimate of the median survival of our patients from the date of the first Ra-223 infusion was 7.8 months. The 95% confidence interval (CI) was (2.8, 14.7; p = 0.0122) indicating our patients had a significantly shorter survival. Our patients did not have a statistical...