Aggressive Treatment Ups Life Expectancy

Surgery or radiation doubles the life expectancy of men with aggressive prostate cancer, a study released Friday in New York said.

Researchers said that many men with aggressive prostate cancer are told that their disease is untreatable. But the study by New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center found that patients with the most aggressive form of non-metastatic prostate cancer who underwent either surgery or radiation had a life expectancy of more than 14 years, compared to those who had more conservative treatment, whose life expectancy was less than seven years.

Unfortunately, pessimism abounds among many doctors, who believe that aggressive prostate cancers are beyond cure and should only be followed with watchful waiting, forestalling any immediate treatment. This new study points to the fallacy of this outlook, finding surgery and radiation more than double the life expectancy for these patients, says Dr. Ashutosh Tewari, the study’s first author and director of robotic prostatectomy and urologic oncology outcomes at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell.