Prostate Cancer Surgery
Leads to High Retreatment Rates
Patients Misinformed

Alternative Medicine Digest #17, 3-4/97, p 99.

Original source: L.A. McKeown, "High Retreatment Rates Shown After Prostate Removal," Medical Tribune (March 21, 1996). 13.

According to a new study issued by Grace L. Lu-Yao, Ph.D., of the U. S. Health Care Financing Administration, surgical removal of the prostate (called prostatectomy) is often not the end stage in treating prostate cancer. In 34.9% of cases (based on a patient study involving 3,494 men treated by prostatectomy from 1985 to 1992), men required further conventional treatment within five years, usually radiation, removal of the testes, or hormone supplementation.

The problem here, according to Dr. Lu-Yao, is that medical information about low retreatment rates led many men to believe that prostate surgery alone would be sufficient for ending the problem. According to Gerald W. Chodak, M.D., of Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago, a physician who contributed to the report, the likelihood that additional therapy will be required in the future is "an additional piece of information that is not generally provided to patients" at the time a prostatectomy is recommended.

Critics of the study contend that the 34.9% figure is too high and that patients diagnosed since 1996 and the advent of tests for prostate-specific antigen (a prostate cancer marker) will show a lower retreatment rate, possibly in the order of 10%. In the Digest's view, the true "additional piece of information" that is routinely withheld from most prostate cancer patients is that effective alternative, noninvasive treatments exist for reversing prostate cancer without prostatectomy in the first place.