Prostate cancer survivability

November 23, 2008 on 5:36 am | In mybachcars.com |
Prostate cancer survivability
  • i've heard that the survival rate for prostate cancer is about the same whether someone get 'treated' or not. Any data out there to support either way? I've priced this low but happy as always to tip for over and beyone. My preference is to get a response that i can either read the summary and take as is, or i can read more if i like, but i dont have to wade through lots of data to understand where its going. Thanks!


  • i'd like to get at least some data that ISN'T from drug companies, medical institustion that have a vested interest in supporting the "best spend money on treatment' school.


  • The National Cancer Institute has a very good site on prostate cancer, and they make the point that: --a lot of men get the disease, especially later in life --it manifests in a wide variety of ways, often-times symptom-free, and with no obvious or serious immediate threat --"watchful waiting" -- the term of art for no treatment -- is a very viable strategy for many patients with prostate cancer. In particular, the site notes the following: ----- http://www.nci.nih.gov/cancertopics/understanding-prostate-cancer-treatment/page5 ...Many men who choose watchful waiting live for years with no signs of disease. A number of studies have found that, for at least 10 or even 15 years, the life expectancy of men treated with watchful waiting (primarily older men with less lethal forms of prostate cancer) is not substantially different from the life expectancy of men treated with surgery or radiation-or, for that matter, of the population at large. ----- So it seems that the answer to your question is "Yes, the survival rate is the about the same", at least among the patients included in the studies mentioned. For patients with a more aggressive variety of the disease -- especially younger patients -- the watchful waiting strategy may not be the preferred choice of treatment. There is a lot of other material available at the NCI site which may meet your need for additional materials to look through. Please click around, and then let me know what additional information I can get for you to make for a complete answer to your question. All the best, pafalafa-ga


  • Thanks Pafalafa, yes, ok this makes sense. But for a 40 year old man whats the stats on treatment? here's my deal. I'm 40, have no reason to believe i have it. But doctor says lets check you. Common reason would say great idea. But if they find a problem and the treatement has as much chance of working as no treatment, then i wounldnt want treatement, in which case why bother testing. I'd like to get real stats, facts, so i can evaluate. FYI, i'm not losing sleep, i probably wont go for any testing, but its got my curiosity of the value of the whole thing. hope this makes sense.


  • I can look into statistics for 40-year olds, if you'd like, but I really have to take issue with your overall premise. Yes...there are numbers to suggest that for some groups of patients, non-treatment can be just as effective as treatment. So why get tested, you ask? The answer is fairly straightforward: (1) to find out if you have prostate cancer, and if you do then (2) to find out which group you belong to. It's the latter point that is key. If you belong the group that does no better with treatment than without -- generally, patients with a fairly mild form of the disease -- then you have one set of considerations. But if you belong to a group with an aggressive form of the disease, then treatment of some sort is the recommended course of action, and the question then becomes, which sort of treatment? So it's not an all or nothing affair -- you may be a 50-50 sort of patient, and you may not be. Hopefully, you're not a patient at all as far as any sort of cancer is concerned. But you still might want to get a check-up. Let me know what sort of additional information you might like on this topic to make for a full answer to your question. Thanks...and stay healthy. paf


  • The only information for "non-treatment" I found stated this was only indicated in the EARLY states of the disease, in elderly men. Here's what I found, no sense in my keeping it to myself: Prostate Cancer Survival Rates http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_2_6x_Prostate_Cancer_Survival_Rates.asp?sitearea= ..."The 5-year relative survival rate is the percentage of patients who do not die from prostate cancer within 5 years after the cancer is found. (Men with prostate cancer who die of other causes are not counted.) Of course, patients might live more than 5 years after diagnosis. These 5-year survival rates are based on men with prostate cancer first treated more than 5 years ago. Men treated today may have a more favorable outlook. Overall, 99% of men diagnosed with prostate cancer survive at least 5 years. Further, 92% survive at least 10 years, and 61% survive at least 15 years. Eighty-six percent of all prostate cancers are found while they are still within the prostate or only in nearby areas. The 5-year relative survival rate for these men is nearly 100%. For the men whose cancer has already spread to distant parts of the body when it is found, 34% will survive at least 5 years..." Prognosis of Prostate Cancer http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/p/prostate_cancer/prognosis.htm There are lots of survival statistic numbers here. from many sources. Prostate Cancer http://cancer.unm.edu/content.aspx?section=typesofcancer&id=896 ..."Doctors will refer to the stage of prostate cancer by either a number or a letter. In order to learn more about the most recent information available concerning the treatment of prostate cancer, click on the appropriate stage for detailed information on survival rates with treatment..." ~~Cynthia


  • thanks Paf, and all for commentary on this one. Yes, i realise it may be the reason to get tested is see if there's a problem, and if there is then which group. But if in the high danger group, there's still no realy eveidence that treatment outperforms not treatment, then why bother getting tested and having a choice that is irrelevant? I know "get tested" is of course a medical mantra, but it would be as its what they know and do. I can get tested for baldness and find out i'm bald, and pay for treatment, but all the evidence says i'll still be bald, (ok weak analagy, its obvious i'm bald but you get my point. So i'm looking for is there any reason to get tested? BTW, i've no reason to believe i do or dont have a problem, but the doctor suggests i do a test, (that's what their paid to do), and i want to consider if based on stats (not just drug/surgery company motivated stats) there's any reason too.


  • One of the problems with modern medical therapies is that one often has to make a decision about them in the absence of reliable, long term statistics about their effectiveness. This isn't really anyone's fault. A cancer survivor who has survived twenty years after first being diagnosed with, say, prostate cancer, is a reflection of the success of a treatment approach taken twenty years ago. But it doesn't tell you much about more recent approaches. For the case of prostate cancer, there is evidence to suggest that some therapies are effective (more so than 'watchful waiting') for some types of cancers. For others, though, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between watchful waiting and active treatment, in terms of overall disease outcomes. And importantly, 'watchful waiting' itself is considered a 'treatment option', and should not be thought as 'doing nothing' or a case of treatment vs no treatment. The watchful waiting does entail active scrutiny as to the course of the disease, with the option of taking a more active treatment approach should conditions change. This is not at all the same as having an undiagnosed case of prostate cancer, and doing nothing to treat it as a result of not knowing about it. Consider the following excerpts from the cancer.gov site regarding Stage I (most localized) through Stage IV (most widespread) prostate cancers (my own comments are in brackets): http://www.nci.nih.gov/cancertopics/understanding-prostate-cancer-treatment/page7 Know Your Options: Understanding Treatment Choices for Prostate Cancer ...Your chances of being alive, and disease-free, 10 or 15 years after diagnosis are apt to depend more on the stage and grade of your cancer than on the choice of treatment. [this is similar to the sentiment of your question...your odds have more to do with the nature of the disease than your choice of treatment, which includes 'watchful waiting' as a treatment option. However, there are certainly profound differences to take into account for each patient in terms of how their disease manifests itself, and what treatments to consider] Stage I and Stage II ...If your prostate cancer is limited to the prostate (Stages I or II) and it is well or moderately differentiated (Gleason score 7 or below), the 5- year outcome is considered excellent for all three treatment options: watchful waiting, surgery, or radiation therapy. [Again--and especially for Stage I and Stage II -- watchful waiting can be as appropriate a choice as other treatment options. This is especially true for older men] ...With a median age of 72 at diagnosis, many men with prostate cancer die of a variety of other natural causes in the next 10 to 15 years. Few men with low-grade localized disease die of prostate cancer. The disease-specific survival rate-which excludes deaths from other causes-is close to 90 percent. In other words, regardless of treatment- watchful waiting, surgery, or radiation therapy-such a man can consider his cancer a chronic disease because he is much more likely to die of other causes than of prostate cancer. [Re-emphasizes the same point as above -- watchful waiting can make sense, especially for older men] ...Men with localized tumors who opt for watchful waiting, if they live long enough, may run a greater risk of eventually developing metastatic disease. In one series of studies, the chance of developing metastases within 10 years was 19 percent for men with well-differentiated tumors and 42 percent for men with moderately differentiated tumors. [But hold the phone...here's something to consider. The watchful waiters may, in fact, be running more of a risk than those actively treating their disease in terms of future odds of metastases.] ...Only one small study has directly compared watchful waiting with radical prostatectomy, and it found no significant differences in survival. More reliable answers should be forthcoming from ongoing trials. [As I mentioned earlier, there's often not a lot of reliable statistics to compare different treatment options, especially with treatments changing over time. But one small study, at least, doesn't show much difference between the two options mentioned] ...Surgery or radiation therapy is chosen typically by those men whose tumors, although apparently localized, are more extensive or poorly differentiated (Gleason score of 8 to 10). Without aggressive therapy, around three-quarters of such men will have developed metastatic disease in the following 10 years, and twothirds will have died from prostate cancer. Whether or not treatment can change these outcomes is under study. [For this group of men, a therapy more aggressive than watchful waiting MAY be indicated, though again, the actual success rate of different therapies has not yet been quantified] Stage III ...External beam radiation therapy is often used to treat Stage III cancers. Besides being less invasive than surgery, it is better suited for bulky tumors. A few men have surgery, while others rely on watchful waiting. Men whose tumors are reclassified as Stage III after surgery (because cancer is found to have spread through the capsule or into the lymph nodes) sometimes go on to have radiation therapy postoperatively. Studies are in progress to evaluate this approach. [More "studies are in progress" language, which hopefully will elaborate on the differences between different treatment approaches] Stage IV ...If your prostate cancer has spread to the nearby lymph nodes or to distant parts of the body, it is called metastatic prostate cancer. Hormonal therapy will generally improve symptoms and delay the progress of disease for another 2 to 3 years. If just the lymph nodes are involved, a man may use hormonal therapy to delay the progress of prostate cancer even longer. [An unambiguous statment that for this condition, some active therapy makes sense, in that it can slow the progress of the disease]. ========== This seems an appropriate time to remind you of the disclaimer at the page-bottom, about GA being no substitute for professional medical advice. Bottom line on the cancer.gov write-up seems to be that precise statistics comparing treatment options (including watchful waiting) are hard to come by. But there are bits and pieces of information to suggest that there are indeed different outcomes in some cases, and that active treatment approaches can make a considerable difference. However, it does seem to come down to a judgement call. Should I get tested? And if the tests show something, then what? No one but you can answer those questions. But I trust the information I've provided here will help you think through the options. Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you on this. All the best...and stay healthy! pafalafa-ga search strategy -- Google search on [ prostate cancer ]


  • Thanks, that was some very generous feedback. By the way, if there's something more you want by way of an answer, just let me know what. The information may be out there, it may not be, but I'm certainly willing to take a look. paf