Patient cohort and study medication
An overview of the study population in given in the CONSORT diagram (see Fig. CONSORT diagram of the studyWe enrolled a total of 36 patients (18 males, 18 females, mean age 64.0 years) in our Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine with 18 being assigned to each study group after randomization. In the treatment arm, patients were scheduled to receive the medication beginning the first day after interstitial brachytherapy for 3 months: PTX (Trental, Sanofi Aventis, Frankfurt, Germany) 400 mg t.i.d. oral and UDCA (Ursofalk, Falk Pharma, Freiburg, Germany) 250 mg t.i.d. oral. As before, patients and physicians were not blinded for the study medication. All drugs were supplied by the local pharmacy. Treatment compliance was monitored by an interrogation at each visit while personal contact to an investigator and/or study nurse was possible any day during regular working hours.