Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Complete author information: Florian R. Schroeck, MD, MS fschroec med. Kaufman, MA skaufman med. Weizer, MD, MS aweizer med. Gilbert urology. Campus Box St. Louis, MO Phone: Fax: Correspondence: Brent K. Use of local therapy for prostate cancer may increase because of the perceived advantages of new technologies such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy IMRT and robotic prostatectomy.
To examine the association of market-level technological capacity with receipt of local therapy. We measured the capacity for delivering treatment with new technology as the number of providers offering robotic prostatectomy or IMRT per population in a market hospital referral region. The association of this measure with receipt of prostatectomy, radiotherapy, or observation was examined with multinomial logistic regression. For each 1, patients diagnosed with prostate cancer, underwent prostatectomy, radiotherapy, and were observed.
Markets with high robotic prostatectomy capacity had higher use of prostatectomy vs. High versus low IMRT capacity did not significantly impact use of prostatectomy vs. Although there was a small shift from radiotherapy to prostatectomy in markets with high robotic prostatectomy capacity, increased capacity for both robotic prostatectomy and IMRT did not change the overall rate of local therapy.
Our findings temper concerns that new technology spurs additional therapy of prostate cancer. Keywords: intensity-modulated radiotherapy, prostate cancer treatment, robotic prostatectomy, technology.
The development and dissemination of new technology is a major determinant of growth in Medicare spending, 1 , 2 which is expected to double within the next 10 years. However, equally important and under recognized is the dissemination of new non-pharmaceutical therapeutics, including surgical technology and new equipment to deliver radiotherapy. These non-pharmaceutical therapeutics vary in the extent to which they aim to substitute a new procedure for an existing one or provide a whole new way of treating patients.
