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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The widespread use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening has led to many men being diagnosed with early prostate cancer. Whether or not to treat older men with the often slow and painless disease is a subject of debate. Now, new research suggests men who are treated survive significantly longer than men who are not.
About 30,000 men die from prostate cancer each year. However, many prostate cancers grow slowly. Some doctors argue men diagnosed with the disease later in life will likely die of other causes before the cancer ever causes problem, and treatment can cause undesirable side effects like incontinence and impotence.
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For the study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia used data from the SEER database -- a population-based cancer registry encompassing about 14 percent of the U.S. population. Study authors compared data on more than 44,600 men between age 65 and 80 who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1991 and 1999.
Study authors report patients who received treatment had a 31-percent lower risk of death during the 12 years of follow-up. Specifically, 24 percent of the patients in the treatment group died compared to 37 percent of the non-treatment group.
Researchers caution this is an observational study, so these results need to be validated by randomized controlled clinical trials of elderly men with localized prostate cancer.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2006;296:2683-2693
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