Surgery unnecessary for many prostate cancer patients

The research findings now presented are from the 29-year follow-up of the Scandinavian Prostate Cancer Group Study Number Four (SPCG-4), investigating the benefits of surgery for prostate cancer. The study comprised 695 men who were randomly assigned to two groups, one to get surgical treatment and the other to receive treatment of symptoms only (“watchful waiting”).

The men in this study were diagnosed between 1989 and 1999. Only a few (12 per cent) of them had their cancer detected early by having their blood tested for prostate-specific antigen (PSA). The study was carried out during the period before large-scale use of the PSA test began in Scandinavia.

After 29 years’ follow-up, 80 per cent of the men had died. For 32 per cent of these, death was due to prostate cancer. Seventy-one men in the surgery group died of prostate cancer, while 110 did so in the group receiving symptom treatment only. The study showed that 12 per cent of those who had prostatectomies had been saved from dying of prostate cancer; that 19 per cent had incurable cancer; but that the majority of the men had died of other causes. The results also showed that the men who had been operated on lived, on average, 2.9 years longer than the men who received treatment of symptoms only.

Source: Surgery unnecessary for many prostate cancer patients