That's about double the rate in previous studies, which usually involved patients treated at top medical centers, says lead author Janet Stanford of Seattle' s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Her study, the first to look at radical prostatectomy's effect on patients from the general population, appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association . Stanford's team studied 1,291 patients in six states.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in U.S. men.
This year, the American Cancer Society estimates that 180,400 Americans will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 31,900 will die of it. Twenty-five percent choose external radiation of the prostate. Despite the complications, three-quarters of the men surveyed said they were satisfied or pleased with the surgery. When told of the findings, Stanford says, many of the patients said they would have had the surgery anyway if they had known.