Prostate cancer: Surgery vs. watchful waiting

More than 230,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year in the United States, but determining their course of treatment remains a source of considerable debate. A new study by researchers from Uppsala University Hospital, Sweden, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and colleagues—which draws from one of the few randomized trials conducted to directly address this issue—finds a substantial long-term reduction in mortality for men with localized cancer who undergo a radical prostatectomy. While the benefit on mortality appears to be limited to men less than age 65, surgery did reduce the risk of metastases and need for additional treatment in older men.

The article appears in the March 6, 2014 edition of New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers used data from the Scandinavian Prostate Cancer Group Study Number 4, which randomized 695 men with early prostate cancer to treatment with surgery or watchful waiting with no initial treatment, with follow-up for up to 24 years. Over the course of the study, 200 of 347 men in the surgery group and 247 of the 348 men in the watchful waiting group died. Of the deaths, 63 in the surgery group and 99 in the watchful waiting group were due to prostate cancer.