Regular examinations can make it possible to delay “radical” treatments, without the risk of excess mortality.
Prostate cancer represents one in four male cancers – or 50,400 new cases in France in 2015, according to the National Cancer Institute. It remains rare before the age of 50, then its incidence increases with age. It is a cancer with a good prognosis, especially if it is diagnosed at the stage where it is still localized (without metastases). Different treatments are possible, the choice being sometimes discussed with the patient. A study has just shown that there are no major differences between treatments in terms of mortality, fifteen years after diagnosis.
These results, published in the New England Journal of Medicinebased on the medical records of around 82,000 Britons aged 50 to 69 who received a PSA test (measurement of a specific protein in the prostate, which, when high, can signal an abnormality such as cancer ), between 1999 and 2009. Among them, 1610 diagnosed with localized prostate cancer accepted that their treatment be…