COMPPARE Study Is Activated

Active adult

The national clinical trial to compare prostate cancer patient outcomes following proton therapy or photon (X-ray) therapy is underway. According to COMPPARE and Proton project manager Adrienne Greenewalt, the first five sites participating in the study are activated and accruing patients.

The clinical trial is known as COMPPARE which stands for “A Prospective COMparative Study of Outcomes with Proton and Photon RAdiation in PRostate CancEr (COMPPARE).” This study is funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and led by Nancy P. Mendenhall, MD, at the University of Florida. COMPPARE will ask 3,000 prostate cancer patients (ages 30-80) across the United States who have chosen to be treated with proton therapy or photon therapy to answer brief surveys regarding treatment choice, quality of life, and side effects for at least three years.

In addition, proton therapy patients can choose to participate in a randomized trial in which half will be randomly assigned to the standard course of therapy and the other half will receive a shorter “hypofractionated” course in which the total dose of radiation will be divided into larger doses with fewer treatments. This additional study will evaluate whether quality of life, side effects, and cure rates differ between patients receiving standard therapy versus shorter therapy.

The goal of the study is to answer the following patient-centered questions:

  1. How likely are men to experience different quality of life issues with protons versus photons?
  2. How likely are men to experience different side effects with either treatment?
  3. Which treatment will result in a better cure rate?
  4. Is a shorter, higher dose treatment regimen as safe and effective as a longer, lower dose treatment regimen?

Because men of African descent are 1.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than twice as likely to die from it, the study team is actively working to recruit Black men to this study and assess whether quality of life, side effects and cancer recurrence outcomes differ for these patients.

Participants in the study over the first three years will receive up to $250 for completing surveys before radiation begins, during treatment, and at follow-up visits. For more information about the study, visit www.comppare.org. Research reported in this study website was funded through a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Award (PCS-2017C1-0422). The views, statements, and opinions presented in this study website are solely the responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), its Board of Governors or Methodology Committee.

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