Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Guided Interstitial Prostate Brachytherapy

Adenocarcinoma of the prostate is currently the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men in the United States and the second leading cause of cancer mortality (1). The natural history of treated clinically localized and potentially curable disease is often protracted. As a result, side effects sustained from the primary treatment may persist for extended periods, often several decades. Therefore, it is important that the treatment, whose goal is to permanently eradicate the disease, also have acceptable complication rates, leaving the patient with an acceptable quality of life after therapy is complete. To this end, efforts aimed at providing a minimally invasive alternative to radical prostatectomy (RP) for the curative treatment of patients with clinically localized prostate cancer have been made.