longevity

Somewhere between "many" and "most" of men that start their PC journeys are Senior Citizens. Adding ten years to that and you've got some really old guys... Ain't too many of them make it to a 20 year mark cause they die from so many other things.  

My dad was successfully treated about 15 years ago. His PSA has never risen. But chances are, he won't be around at the 30 year mark, for reasons that have nothing to do with prostate cancer--he's already past the actuarial average lifespan of a man in the U.S. And he was younger than the average patient diagnosed with prostate cancer, which is still 70.

I am interested in this question, too, since I was diagnosed at 43. I'm especially interested in long term survival after salvage radiation, an area where followups are even shorter, because the technology hasn't been around that long. I'm watching the research of Andrew Stephenson and colleagues, in particular. They first released a multicenter study with a followup time of 4 years post-SRT, then updated it to 6 years. Catalona has released his single physician data on SRT patients looking out 10 years (and it's dismal compared to shorter term results).

It's important to realize that when you get very long time series, you are likely including men diagnosed before the advent of PSA testing, before advanced surgical techniques (like those developed by Walsh) were widespread, before 3D conformal radiation, protons, IMRT/IGRT, and before today's ADT drugs.

Nevertheless, there are a few studies that look back 20 or 30 years:
http://www.modernmedicine.com/modernmedicine/Modern+Medicine+Now/Local-distant-prostate-cancer-control-strong-after/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/711793

Ralph, you put the long in longevity!

There are quite a few 15 year studies for radiaton and 20 year studies for surgery. The long term studies for surgery show that 10% of the reoccurrances occur after 10 years. This means that with a reoccurrance rate of 30% you have a 3% chance of reoccurring after 10 years. The vast majority of reoccurrances from any treatment happen within the 1st 5 years and reoccurrance rates drastically reduce after that, but don't go to zero. Dattoli has 14 year data for radiation with risk of failure at 1% beyond 5 years.
JT

Ralph is my superhero.

My surgery results were almost identical. Bilateral seminal vesicle invasion and the surgeon noted he stopped scraping suspicious tissue at my rectal wall to prevent damage to my rectum. 4+3=7.

As Brad Paisley says in a country song ~ I still got a pair. But I did shrink 'em with 28 months of HT...

I hope Ralph's good fortune extends over to me, too...

Tony