A mix of treatments may extend life for men with aggressive prostate cancer

For men diagnosed with aggressive cancer that’s confined to the prostate and nearby tissues, the overarching goal of treatment is to keep the disease from spreading (or metastasizing) in the body. Doctors can treat these men with localized therapies, such as surgery and different types of radiation that target the prostate directly. And they can also give systemic treatments that kill off rogue cancer cells in the bloodstream. Hormonal therapy, for instance, is a systemic treatment that kills prostate cancer cells by depriving them of testosterone, which fuels their growth. Now a new study shows that a mix of different treatments, or a “multimodal” approach to prostate cancer therapy, lengthens survival in men who have this diagnosis. The study was limited to men with Gleason 9 and 10 cancers. The Gleason grading system ranks tumors by how likely they are to spread, and 10 is the highest rank on the scale. “The takeaway finding is that men with high-grade, localized prostate cancer do better when they get multimodal care,” said Dr. Amar Kishan, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine, who led the study. “If they can tolerate it, then that’s what should be offered.” Kishan and collaborators from 12 large hospitals in the United States and Norway pooled nearly 20 years of patient data from their respective institutions. The 1,809 men included in the study had each been treated in o...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Cancer Men's Health Prostate Health Source Type: blogs