Schymura et al. BMC Cancer 2010, 10:152 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/10/152 Table 2: Distribution of initial treatment by clinical and tumor characteristics. Characteristic Number1 (%) Number2 (%) Radical prostatectomy Radiation therapy Hormonal therapy Watchful waiting P3 Percent receiving each therapy Page 8 of 15 12.38 <0.0001 19.06 <0.0001 22.15 <0.0001 31.81 23.51 12.21 25.49 12.38 15.95 21.26 27.93 38.72 15.62 11.93 32.54 26.54 26.32 36.89 <0.0001 17.02 <0.0001 Screen- detected DRE results PSA value Yes No Unknown Normal Abnormal Equivocal/ unk 0-4 >4-10 >10-20 >20-50 50+ Unknown 2-4 5-7 8-10 Unknown Gleason score Comorbidity score 0 1 2+ 2,106 864 358 1,312 1,086 930 290 1,603 617 260 111 447 352 2,475 289 212 2,772 441 115 (63) (26) (11) (39) (33) (28) (9) (48) (19) (8) (3) (13) (11) (74) (9) (6) (83) (13) (3) 2,092 855 353 1,301 1,081 918 289 1,599 608 254 111 439 347 2,459 285 209 2,749 437 114 (63) (26) (11) (39) (33) (28) (9) (48) (18) (8) (3) (13) (11) (75) (9) (6) (83) (13) (3) 43.45 31.70 36.83 42.51 37.47 38.34 43.94 46.78 33.22 20.87 20.72 35.76 31.70 44.57 25.96 14.35 41.36 33.87 21.93 34.46 25.73 27.20 28.67 38.48 27.02 28.72 33.27 38.82 35.04 27.03 15.26 23.92 30.87 40.70 37.80 32.34 27.69 23.68 9.70 10.76 12.46 9.76 11.84 9.15 5.19 7.57 12.01 22.83 24.32 10.25 7.49 8.95 21.40 15.31 9.28 11.90 28.07 1: Sample size for analysis of conservative versus definite therapy. 2: Sample size for dividing conservative treatment into hormone therapy and watchful waiting (excludes 28 observations missing dates for hormone therapy). Used for calculating proportions in this table. 3: Probability from a two-sided X2 test comparing the distribution of treatments across levels of the variable. overall survival at 5 or 8 years of follow-up [34]; but after 10 years found a 5% absolute risk reduction (0.74 relative risk, p = 0.04) in overall mortality in the radical prostatec- tomy group [35]. At 12 years, the all-cause mortality rela- tive risk was attenuated and no longer statistically significant [36]. In the same trial, radical prostatectomy reduced prostate cancer-specific mortality as well as risk of distant metastases; these benefits were evident at 5 years of follow-up and showed little or no further increase in benefit 10 or more years after surgery [34-36]. The third trial, which compared radical prostatectomy with external beam radiation therapy, did not evaluate survival but found that surgery was more effective in pre- venting progression, recurrence, or distant metastases in patients with non-PSA detected cancers [32]. In our study five-year overall survival for radical pros- tatectomy was significantly higher than for the other three treatment modalities. However, when subdividing radiation therapy, we found that survival following brachytherapy was comparable. Although there appeared to be a slight survival advantage for radiation therapy compared to conservative management, even when lim-