The Hope Foundation funds research targeting genitourinary cancers, including prostate, bladder, kidney, and testicular cancers. Our support enables SWOG researchers to develop more effective treatments and improve quality of life for patients.
SWOG Study Reveals the Long-Term Toll of Prostate Cancer Treatment
A major SWOG study published in JAMA Oncology offers some of the most detailed data yet on what men can expect in the years after prostate cancer treatment. The study found that the risks of serious complications don’t end when treatment does. For many men, they persist for a decade or more.
What the study looked at:
Researchers analyzed data from nearly 52,000 men who had enrolled in two large NCI cancer prevention studies. By linking that information to Medicare claims, they were able to track long-term complications in men who had been treated for prostate cancer, and to compare them to untreated men of similar ages.
Findings:
Over 12 years of follow-up, men who had a prostatectomy, surgical removal of the prostate, had a risk of urinary or sexual complications more than seven times higher than that of untreated men. For men whose first treatment was radiotherapy, that risk was nearly three times higher. The radiotherapy group also faced roughly three times the risk of developing bladder cancer.
The study’s authors argue that men need access to this kind of specific, quantitative risk information before they decide whether to be screened for prostate cancer at all, not just before they decide on a treatment
This research was supported in part by The Hope Foundation for Cancer Research.