Comparative effectiveness of prostate cancer treatments

Editor's Note

At 10 years, prostate cancer mortality was low irrespective of the treatment and with no significant difference among treatments, this study finds.

Treatments included active monitoring (1.5 deaths/1,000 person years), radical prostatectomy (0.9 deaths/1,000 person years), and external-beam radiotherapy (0.7 deaths/1,000 person years).

Surgery and radiotherapy were associated with lower incidences of disease progression and metastases than monitoring.

Of 82,429 men analyzed, 2,664 were diagnosed with prostate cancer. A total of 1,643 agreed to be randomized to active monitoring (545 men), surgery (553), or radiotherapy (545).