New Study Sees Benefit in Prostate Removal

Men who opt to have cancerous prostates surgically removed have higher long-term survival rates than those who delay the operation, and the benefits of surgery may be greatest for men under 65, Swedish researchers said Wednesday.

The study, published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, is designed to help doctors and their patients find the best strategy for treating tumors found in 230,000 U.S. men each year. The issue is complicated because prostate cancer often grows so slowly that patients die of other causes.

The new findings update research begun in 1989 that showed 347 men assigned to a surgery known as radical prostatectomy had death rates comparable to the 348 men in a “watchful waiting” group.

The new study, which looked at an additional three years of data, suggests patients can’t wait forever.

The team, led by Anna Bill-Axelson of University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden, found that during a 10-year period, men who had the surgery were 44% less likely to die of prostate cancer, 26% less likely to die from any cause and 67% less likely to have their tumors grow or reappear.

But the findings may not apply to everyone. The researchers found evidence that men 65 and older were not harmed by being in the watchful waiting group.

“The reduction in disease-specific mortality as a result of radical prostatectomy was greatest among, or even limited to, patients younger than 65,” they concluded. The study didn’t include enough older men to be definitive.