How do you approach a patient with prostatic urethral lift (UroLift) seeking definitive radiation for prostate cancer?
I've not yet seen a patient with a UroLift device in place. Apparently, from the company website, the device is H-shaped and the vertical parts are on either side of a prostate lobe and connected by a suture-like strand. The vertical parts compress the prostate lobe and are placed on either side of the urethra. Improvement in IPSS was maintained for 5 years (vs. sham procedure in randomized trial, Can J Urol 2017;24: 8802-8813).
The vertical parts are stainless steel and there is MRI artifact associated with the device, so MRI-based, radiation treatment planning might be impacted. Otherwise, the device looks not too different from steel surgical clips and I wouldn't think that there would be any contraindication to external beam radiotherapy for prostate cancer. I'm not sure if the device itself, with the horizontal sutures, would interfer with brachytherapy catheter placement but that's a conceivable limitation.
Interestingly, there is an article in Practical Radiation Oncology that reports on using UroLift as a surrogate for fiducials. The authors indicate that they work just as good as implanted fiducials.
While I have treated patients with urolift with standard fractionation, is there a concern with SBRT?