Prostate cancer: Zapping metastatic tumors with radiation improves survival.

Oligometastatic cancer is an early form of stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to other organs in the body, but only to a limited degree — generally defined as no more than three to five areas outside the prostate gland, most commonly the lymph nodes or bones.

Barely a decade ago it was considered universally fatal, and treatment was limited to systemic hormonal therapies that shut down testosterone, a hormone that drives the tumors to grow. But now, exciting developments in the field are leading to new treatment strategies that are improving patient survival in clinical trials.

These strategies are enabled by advances in medical imaging, revealing metastatic tumors that were previously too small to see. Doctors can now treat the tumors directly with radiation or surgery. This is called metastasis-directed therapy (MDT), and it is allowing some men with oligometastatic prostate cancer to delay or even completely avoid hormonal therapy, along with its challenging side effects.