Prostate cancer surgery rarely a life saver
19th July 2012
Radical prostatectomy fails to save lives in most men with localised prostate cancer, a long-running study finds.
In a randomised trial of over 700 men with PSA-detected cancers, 47% of those who underwent prostatectomy died during follow-up of up to 12 years, compared to 50% of those assigned to observant management.
Nor was there a significant difference in prostate cancer-specific mortality: 5.8% of men in the prostatectomy group died from