A great concern for men as they age is the increased risk of prostate cancer. On the brighter side of the picture it appears that men with low-risk prostate cancer are not at all likely to succumb to this illness reports Johns Hopkins Medicine. Men should be reassured that if they have low-risk prostate cancer they are not likely to be harmed by their illness.
According to the results of a study by researchers at the Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins men who suffer from relatively unaggressive prostate tumors and whose disease is monitored carefully by urologists are not likely to develop metastatic prostate cancer or to die from their cancer. The majority of the men in this study were Caucasian. It has been pointed out that these outcomes may not apply to African-American men who often have more aggressive cancers.
H. Ballentine Carter, M.D. says that the natural progression of prostate cancer has been observed to occur over a long period of time for as long as 20 years. The majority of men who have low-risk prostate cancer generally die from another cause. Dr. Carter points out that there is a careful balance which is often hard to find between doing no harm without treating men for this condition and overtreating men. The data from this study should help with this problem.
This study has been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The objective was to assess long-term outcomes in a prospective active-surveillance program of men who had favorable-risk prostate cancer. It has been concluded that men with favorable-risk prostate cancer should be told of the low likelihood that they will be harmed from their condition. They should encouraged to consider surveillance instead of curative oriented intervention. The findings in this study should help many men with favorable-risk prostate cancer enjoy a higher quality of life.
