Will one important thing still function properly after treatment for prostate cancer? That’s the BIG question for the 240,000 men who will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year. Now comes a set of indicators, assembled by doctors at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, that promises a pretty good answer: Yes, No, Maybe. HealthDay reports that the researchers handed out surveys to 1,200 men who were treated for prostate cancer between 1995 and 2007. Based on their answers, which may or may not be truthful, the researchers found that a man’s risk of erectile dysfunction varied depending on the type of treatment given. For men with no ED issues before treatment, surgical removal of the prostate was associated with new-onset ED in about 60 percent of cases within 2 years of therapy. Just over 40 percent of men without prior ED experienced the problem following external radiation, the study found, and the figure dropped to below 40 percent for those who underwent brachytherapy [radioactive “seeds” embedded within the prostate]. HealthDay reports that a subsequent analysis of questionnaire responses revealed that certain patient characteristics, such as high PSA levels, were also associated with higher impotence risk. Other key pre-treatment variables included age, race, BMI, and sexual history. These factors were then scored alongside some particulars of treatment itself (such as the use of nerve-sparing surgical approaches and/or hormone therapy-enhanced radiation). The researchers say that their test was 77 to 90 percent accurate in predicting a man’s risk for developing treatment-related ED, depending on the type of treatment received. It could also assess an individual’s likelihood for developing ED along a continuum, ranging from as little as 10 percent risk up to a high of 70 percent.
Read an abstract of the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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This watchfull waiting in the aged is for the birds. I am 88 years old and have had BPH for thirty years and PSA’s started to rise from normal to 18.6 before a biopsy was suggested over a three year period. Biopsy revealed I had adinocarcinoma in five of 12 biopsies. Further scans revealed normal bone scan but metastatic nodes in my bifurcation ortic artery area which ruled out treatement with radiation which would have probably cured my prolem had earlier intervention been done.
I am now on hormone treatment and will have to wait six months before checking my PSA which is a means of following my progression of the disease. A more aggresive approach would have probably taken care of this situation if it had not been for watchful waiting.
I would advise anytone to insist on early biopsy when hormone treatment was the only recourse.
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