A trial comparing different ways of giving radiotherapy for prostate cancer (CHHIP)

The research team are analysing the data for this trial in two parts.

First of all they have looked at the information about side effects of radiotherapy for 418 of the men who took part in the trial. Below is a summary of this information.

Next they plan to analyse the information about how well the treatment worked for all 3,216 of the men who took part. We will update this page once that information is available.

The men who took part in this trial were put into 1 of 3 groups.

• Group 1 had standard dose radiotherapy, which is 37 fractions in 7 1/2 weeks
• Group 2 had hypofractionated radiotherapy, with 20 fractions in 4 weeks
• Group 2 had hypofractionated radiotherapy,  with 19 fractions in just under 4 weeks

The research team looked at how many men had side effects affecting their bowel and bladder 2 years after treatment. The results were similar in all 3 groups.

They found that

• 6 out of 138 men (4.3%) in group 1 had bowel side effects
• 5 out of 137 men (3.6%) in group 2 had bowel side effects
• 2 out of 143 men (1.4%) in group 3 had bowel side effects

and

• 3 out of 138 men (2.2%) in group 1 had bladder side effects
• 3 out of 137 men (2.2%) in group 2 had bladder side effects
• None of the 143 men in group 3 had bladder side effects

The research team concluded that giving radiotherapy in fewer, higher doses is safe and doesn’t cause more side effects than standard treatment. They will look at how well hypofractionated radiotherapy works as a treatment for prostate cancer in their next analysis.

We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed ) and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.