This sounds like a job for AndroCar:
Swedish study suggests
not treating some
prostate cancers
Johns Hopkins doctor
disagrees
February 11, 1997
Web posted at: 10:30 p.m. EST
From Correspondent Dan Rutz
ATLANTA (CNN) -- Behind lung cancer, prostate cancer is
the leading cancer killer for men. Although it is usually
treatable if diagnosed early, a new study by a group of
Swedish scientists questions whether immediate
treatment is always the best move.
Prostate cancers aren't all curable, and they don't even
grow at the same rate. Some, in fact, grow so slowly that
they never pose a threat to life, especially for older men.
Meanwhile, treatment of any prostate cancer has some
serious drawbacks. Prostate cancer surgery often makes
men impotent, and sometimes incontinent, too.
Thus, if a prostate cancer is
growing so slowly that it will
never threaten the life of its
victim, the logical action would
be no action. The trick is to
determine who needs
aggressive treatment, and
who does not. Swedish
doctors usually employ
"watchful waiting" -- in other
words, no treatment -- to determine which patients need
radical treatment.
The study, published in this week's Journal of the
American Medical Association, concluded that after 15
years, men with early-stage prostate cancer were just
about as likely to survive with or without treatment. It
followed 642 patients diagnosed with prostate cancer for
its study.
Dr. Patrick Walsh, who is chief of
urology at Johns Hopkins Medical
School, disagrees with the study's
findings. "I think it's misleading. The
authors conclude that there's no reason
to treat localized cancer because it
doesn't kill anyone," he said.
(119K/10 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)
"My question is, if localized prostate cancer doesn't kill
anyone, why does Sweden have one of the highest death
rates from prostate cancer in the world?" According to
Walsh, Swedish men are 27 percent more likely to die of
prostate cancer than their American counterparts.
Walsh is a firm believer in removing cancerous prostates
from men who are expected to live at least 10 years,
providing the cancer hasn't spread -- a strategy the
Swedish study called "substantial overtreatment."
In the Swedish study, the average age of subjects at
diagnosis was 72. In the United States, many men in that
age range wouldn't get aggressive treatment either. But
from the American Urological Association on down, the
consensus is that failing to treat younger men with prostate
cancer consigns them to an early death. |
