Treatment versus monitoring of prostate cancer: Survival rates the same after 10 years

[Nelson Vergel]

'Taken together, the studies bolster a growing consensus that men with organ-confined prostate cancer can safely avoid treatment for some period of time. The results show that one case of metastatic cancer was prevented for every 27 men treated with surgery and every 33 men treated with radiation. “These studies again confirm the lack of evidence that treatment interventions for so-called early prostate cancer lead to any meaningful benefits in survival,” said Dr. Marc Garnick, the Gorman Brothers Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and editor in chief of HarvardProstateKnowledge.org. “Additional analyses will be required to see if we can identify those men in each group who did develop metastases and then design treatment programs to see if we can modify that risk.”

http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/...v-ga-memberid=10892953&mid=10892953&ml=310619