Yeah, because the "treatment" is the disease...(Wall Street Journal) Men With Prostate Cancer Can Thrive for Years With Less Aggressive Treatment
Mortality in large study was equivalent whether men underwent surgery, radiation or surveillance
https://www.wsj.com/articles/prostat...tment-2be2a9e9
Many prostate-cancer patients could delay or forgo radical treatment without compromising quality of life or longevity, a study showed, adding to a reconsideration of how aggressively to treat some common cancers.
Men with low-grade and some with moderate-grade localized prostate cancer could safely choose surveillance over surgery or radiation, according to a study published on Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Its authors followed about 1,600 men in the U.K. diagnosed with localized prostate cancer for a median of 15 years. They found that mortality was low whether patients received radiotherapy, a prostatectomy or active monitoring: 3% of patients in the study died from prostate cancer.
The length and breadth of the study confirms that surveillance is sufficient to manage early-stage prostate cancer for many patients, said Matthew Smith, director of the Genitourinary Malignancies Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston.