For many here it may be relevant that this article says that all those men in the study were aged 65 and over at diagnosis. As I undersatnd it older people don't heasl as well (I know that was true for my dad)
Toxicity is the right word, however I found something where the NCI says they'd prefer it not to be used:
Toxicity basically means side effects. Here's a booklet from the NCI about
it
ctep.cancer.gov/protocolDevelopment/electronic_applications/docs/ctcmanual_v4_10-4-99.pdfKey section is probably:
COMMON TOXICITY CRITERIA
Definition of Adverse Event
• Toxicity – Toxicity is NOT clearly defined by regulatory organizations. Toxicity has been described as an adverse event that has an attribution (the relationship to investigational agent) of possible, probable or definite. To minimize confusion, the NCI would recommend that the term toxicity NOT be utilized.
Note: The Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, Common Toxicity Criteria, Version 2.0 (CTC, v2.0) uses the term “toxicity” for historical reasons, but recommends that the term “adverse event” with its attribution be used instead whenever possible.
• Adverse Event – Any unfavorable symptom, sign, or disease (including an abnormal laboratory finding) temporally associated with the use of a medical treatment or procedure that may or may NOT be considered related to the medical treatment or procedure.
• Common Toxicity Criteria (CTC)1
– The CTC, v2.0 provides descriptive terminology for adverse event reporting. A grading (severity) scale is provided for each adverse event term.So I guess surgery plus SRT is going to mean plemty of side effects for me.
Alf