Too Much Prostate Cancer Treatment

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Too Much Prostate Cancer Treatment

 

http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/126/116348.htm

Researchers Say Surgery and Radiation Overused in Early Prostate Cancer By

Daniel DeNoon

WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD

on Tuesday, August 15, 2006

 

Aug. 15, 2006 -- More than half of men with low-risk prostate cancerprostate

cancer are overtreated with surgery or radiation

therapy, a University of Michigan study shows.

 

David C. Miller, MD, MPH, and colleagues looked at National Cancer Institute

data on 24,405 men with lower-risk prostate cancer.

These are men of any age with low-grade tumors or men aged 70 or older with

moderate-grade tumors.

 

Low-grade tumors don't always become dangerous. And if they do, there's still

time to act before they turn deadly. Men over 70 with

moderate-grade prostate tumors are most likely to die of something other than

prostate cancer over the 20 years after diagnosis.

 

Miller's research team found that 55% of men with these low-risk prostate

cancers underwent surgery or radiation treatment within a

year of diagnosis.

 

Miller and colleagues note that early treatment for prostate cancer helps many

men. But for many other men, early surgery or

radiation therapy means suffering bothersome side effects yet getting little

benefit in return.

 

" It is clear that the number of lower-risk patients who receive initial

aggressive therapy is not trivial, " Miller said, in a news

release. " We have to ask the question whether this is too much treatment for

some of these men. "

 

Miller and colleagues note that men who learn they have cancer -- and their

doctors -- often want to take an action-oriented

response. But acting too fast, they suggest, is as bad as acting too slowly.

 

" In our view, if the treatment decision is inappropriate for an individual

patient, then no matter how skillfully surgery is

performed or radiation is delivered, it is poor-quality treatment, " they

conclude. " For this reason, efforts to reduce overtreatment

should be a clinical and public health priority. "

 

The study appears in the Aug. 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer

Institute. Miller is now at the David Geffen School of

Medicine at UCLA.