The symposium at Genitourinary Cancers, sponsored jointly by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society for Radiation Oncology and the Society of Urologic Oncology, reports that death after prostatectomy is seldom due to prostate cancer, and can be attributed to cardiovascular diseases, non-prostate malignancies, and other causes.

Research led by Scott E. Eggener, MD, Assistant Professor of Surgery, scrutinized data from 119,391 men detected with prostate cancer between 1988 and 2003 and treated with radical prostatectomy therapy. The research reports, a total of 17,996 deaths occurred. Of which 19%, 29%, 27%, 25% originate from prostate cancer, cardiovascular causes, malignancies, other unknown causes, respectively.

Dr. Eggener said that he “did not expect to find such a large difference between prostate-cancer mortality and mortality from other causes”.

In men above the age of 65, the mortality rate from prostate cancer at 5 and 15 years after surgery were 0.9% and 4.6%, and the mortality rate from other causes were 7.7% and 42.3%, respectively.

Dr. Eggener and his colleagues concluded, “Significant effort should be directed at screening, preventing, and treating non-prostate cancer risks for mortality in these patients”.