Bobby Koneru, Vice Chairman of The American Radium Society, Founder and President of POG, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“LDR brachytherapy has some of the best long-term cure rates in prostate cancer.
It’s also one of the most underutilized treatments in the country. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a communication failure.
The data has been there for decades. 15-year outcomes that rival or beat surgery. Preservation of urinary function. Less or zero need for Androgen Deprivation Therapy. A single outpatient procedure. Patients go home the same day.
And yet when a man sits down with his urologist after a prostate cancer diagnosis, brachytherapy often doesn’t make the shortlist.
Not because it doesn’t work. Because the people positioned to refer it never fully understood it.
That’s not an accusation. It’s a systems problem.
Urologists train in surgery. Their mental models are built around what they can see, touch, and control. Radiation is someone else’s department – a black box they hand patients off to, hope for the best, and rarely follow up on.
The result? Shared decision-making that isn’t really shared.
Ajay Bhatnagar, Manuj Agarwal and I wrote this book because that gap has a cost and patients are paying it.
Modern Low Dose Rate Brachytherapy for Prostate Cancer wasn’t written for radiation oncologists. It was written for the urologist who wants to actually understand what happens after the referral and make a more informed recommendation the next time a 62-year-old man with intermediate-risk disease is sitting across from them, scared, and waiting for guidance.
The cure rates were never the problem. The conversation was.”
Other articles featuring Bobby Koneru on OncoDaily.