I ran across this article and thought it might be of interest.
Unfortunately it doesn't indicate when it was written.

John

Recent Studies Raise Questions About Effectiveness Of Radioactive Seed
Implantation
by William J. Catalona, M.D.


After a decade of being abandoned, the implantation of radioactive
seeds for prostate cancer has become popular again and is being
marketed aggressively in many places.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Implantation of radioactive seeds was first popularized in the 1970s,
but the long-term results were unsatisfactory, at least in part
because the seeds could not be accurately placed by hand in the
prostate gland.  Consequently, "seeds" were largely abandoned until
the late 1980s, when ultrasound guidance for seed placement was
developed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, two recent reports in medical journals have raised other
questions about the effectiveness of seeds as compared with radical
prostatectomy or external beam radiotherapy.

One report is from the Pacific Northwest Cancer Foundation in Seattle,
Washington, where ultrasound-guided seed therapy was popularized.  In
the publication, Cancer, Dr. Haakon Ragde and his associates presented
10-year follow-up results in two groups of patients:

A low-risk group with low PSA, low Gleason grade, and low tumor stage
who were treated with seeds alone and a high-risk group with higher
PSA, higher Gleason grade and higher tumor stage who were treated with
seeds plus supplemental external beam radiotherapy.

The results showed that in the low-risk group, the percentage of men
who remained free from tumor recurrence  (measured by their PSA
remaining at less than .5) decreased by 19 percent.

At 7 years of follow-up, 79 percent of the men remained free from
tumor recurrence.  At 10 years of follow-up, 60 percent of the men
were tumor free.  The tumor recurrence rate is the same as that
achieved with the old hand-held techniques of seed implantation in the
1970s.

Surprisingly, the tumor recurrence rate was higher in the low-risk
patients who received seeds alone than in the high-risk patients who
received both seeds and external beam radiotherapy.  This finding
suggests that, even with ultrasound guidance, seed implantation alone
was not very effective.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In another report in the Journal of the American Medical Association
from the Joint Center for Radiation Therapy at Harvard Medical School
and the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Anthony V. D'Amico compared
the results of treatment with seeds, external beam radiotherapy, and
radical prostatectomy at 5 years of follow-up.

For patients with low-grade tumors (Gleason 2-4), there was no
appreciable difference between the groups in tumor recurrence rate
after 5 years.  However, for men with moderately (Gleason 5-7) or
poorly-differentiated (Gleason 8-10) tumors, patients treated with
seeds had a higher tumor recurrence rate than those treated with
either radical prostatectomy or external beam radiotherapy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taken together, these studies suggest that, in the long term, seeds
alone may not be adequate treatment for many patients with early-stage
prostate cancer.