Early prostate operation saves lives: Swedish study

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2005

STOCKHOLM (AFP) — Men who detect prostate cancer early on and undergo surgery to remove the prostate gland increase their chances of survival, a pioneering Swedish study showed.

The results of the study, which appear in the New England Journal of Medicine, are controversial because medical opinions have long been divided about whether to surgically remove the prostate gland in the early stages of cancer or treat it with radiation or hormone therapy.

"When you remove the prostate gland, you get rid of the cancer but many men become impotent and some of them become incontinent. It's very difficult to know how to best advise these patients," the author of the study, Hans-Olov Adami, professor of cancer epidemiology at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, told AFP on...