If you or a loved one is considering treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, you may wonder about long-term side effects. Here are the latest research findings.
Until recently, most studies of side effects experienced by patients treated for localized prostate cancer have only lasted a few years. Fortunately, that has begun to change. The longest follow-up to date comes from a 2013 study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers identified 1,655 men with localized prostate cancer who were treated with surgery or radiation in the mid-1990s and were age 55 to 74 at the time of treatment. Over a 15-year period, the researchers periodically asked the men if they were experiencing erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence or bowel urgency.
The findings. After five years, men who had surgery were significantly more likely to have erectile dysfunction and urinary incontinence, while men who received radiation therapy had higher rates of bowel urgency. But after 15 years, rates of these concerns were similar in both groups, and most of the men, regardless of treatment, had developed erectile dysfunction. Some men underwent additional treatments, which may have increased their risk of developing side effects, but these problems also become more common in all men with the passage of time.
Because men usually live for many years after therapy for localized prostate cancer, it’s important to keep the short- and the long-term pictures in mind when making treatment decisions. These new findings shed important light on the latter.
The above appeared in the April 20th issue of the Johns Hopkins Health Alerts. I strongly recommend that the readers of this website subscribe electronically to this valuable service from Johns Hopkins Urology. See the attached link. A significant lesson I and many others have learned from our prostate cancer experiences is that no matter what therapeutic route is chosen, a man is anatomically “never quite the same”. The goal is to minimize all potential side effects by availing one-self of the best physicians and resources available.