Node Positive Prostate Cancer – Treatment and Survival

Overall survival and cancer-specific survival for those with node-positive prostate cancer treated with surgery lived longer than those who elected radiation treatment. 

Men diagnosed with node positive prostate cancer need to decide if they want to include a targeted treatment to their prostate gland along with a systemic treatment like hormonal therapy. 

Most men who elect to include a targeted therapy will choose between either surgery or radiation.  A retrospective observational study concluded that men who did elect to use surgery as opposed to radiation lived longe.

Read the study at;
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pros.24317

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Transcript

Overall survival and cancer-specific survival for those with node-positive prostate cancer treated with surgery lived longer than those who elected radiation treatment.  

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Men diagnosed with node positive, also known as cN1 prostate cancer, face many different decisions about their treatments. Among their first treatment choices will be to decide if they want to first treat the prostate gland with targeted therapy or just move to systemic therapy.   

Targeted treatment means treating the prostate gland, this is sometimes called debulking, even though the cancer has already spread outside the gland and moved into the lymph nodes. Urologists disagree that using targeted treatment for node positive prostate cancer will provide an advantage over just using a systemic treatment.  

If targeted treatment is used, it will most likely be some sort of surgery or radiation. A retrospective, observational study was performed to see if either a surgical or radiation type of targeted therapy might be clinically superior when compared to the other. The study did not evaluate if there was a clinical advantage to using a targeted therapy.  

The study evaluated the five-year overall mortality (comparing the number of people who died from any cause) and the five-year cancer specific mortality rates (comparing the number of people who died from prostate cancer).  

The study concluded that overall survival and cancer-specific survival for those with node-positive prostate cancer treated with surgery lived longer than those who elected radiation treatment.  

I have included a link to thee study in the show notes. 

This has been Joel Nowak for Cancer ABCs.

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