What is the Optimal Treatment for Early Prostatic Cancer? Summary of the Discussion

Abstract

There was agreement at the end that prospective studies are necessary to solve the problems touched upon in this panel discussion. Screening studies and studies of the cancer cases detected as a result of such studies could be useful in this respect and treatment studies could be organized in this conjunction. There is little doubt that both radical prostatectomy and radiotherapy can cure some patients. Excellent local control is achieved especially with radical prostatectomy. the side-effects of radiotherapy and radical prostatectomy have decreased during recent years due to improvement of treatment techniques. Further improvment, however, seems to be necessary to justify a purely palliative use of these methods. It was also suggested that the risk of these treatment modalities in the future might become so low that the question of treatment or no treatment of early prostate cancer may become irrelevant.