Prognosis
Prostate cancer is the most common internal cancer in American men. (For men, skin cancer is the most common cancer and only lung cancer causes more cancer deaths.) The lifetime probability of developing prostate cancer is about 17%. Each year, nearly 200,000 men in the United States are diagnosed with prostate cancer, and about 27,000 die from the disease.
A survival rate indicates the percentage of patients who live a specific number of years after the cancer is diagnosed. A relative survival rate compares the survival of people with a specific type of cancer to the expected survival of people who do not have cancer. For prostate cancer, the 10-year relative survival rate is about 91% and the 15-year survival rate is about 76%. After 15 years, survival rates stabilize. The odds of survival depend in part on how far advanced the cancer is when a man is first diagnosed. Research indicates that men who are diagnosed with low-grade prostate cancers have a minimal risk of dying from prostate cancer up to 20 years after diagnosis. However, men diagnosed with more severe forms of prostate cancer have a higher risk of dying within 10 years.
Prognosis for Early Stage Disease
Because so many prostate tumors are low-grade and slow growing, survival rates are excellent when prostate cancer is detected in its early stages.
|
Click the icon to see an image of the pelvic lymph nodes. |
Prognosis in Late Stage Disease
Locally Advanced. If the disease is at the locally-advanced stage, in which it has spread beyond the prostate but only to nearby regions, it is more difficult to cure, but survival rates can be prolonged for years in many men. (When cancer has metastasized to the pelvic lymph nodes, the outlook is worse than if it has spread to other areas.)
Metastasized Cancer. If prostate cancer has spread to distant organs (metastasized), average survival time is 1 - 3 years, but some of these patients live much longer.
Prognosis after Recurrence
If cancer recurs after initial treatment for early-stage tumors, it is still potentially curable if it is contained within the prostate, although in most cases the cancer has spread. Hormone treatments for such recurring cancers can often prolong survival for years, although the cancer almost always returns again.
Previous Section
Review Date: 07/26/2010
Reviewed By: Harvey Simon, MD, Editor-in-Chief, Associate Professor of Medicine,
Harvard Medical School; Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital.
Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M.,
Inc.
A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, also known as the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission (www.urac.org)
