Sheldon, this is what you missed:
"After a median of 10 years, 171 of 364 men assigned surgery had died, while 183 of 367 assigned to observation died. In the surgery group, 5.8 per cent of the men died from prostate cancer compared with 8.4 per cent of the men in the observation group. Neither difference was statistically significant."
Fewer than 10% in either group who died, died of prostate cancer. It was done on older men.
Also, I read "median of 10 years," which means I suspect this may be an actuarial study, where the study continued to accept guys after the study began, and those people who entered later skew the results further.
NEJM is less respected than the JIR in academia.
I had ths discussion with my radiation oncologist, these studies are invariably done on older men, and as I pointed out, the key is reading the fatality number.
I've read a lot of research papers in my life, most long before I was diagnosed with this disease. I was married for 16 years to a woman who runs multiple labs in multiple countries for the big P. and, no, this is not a grudge against the ex; it is just what I learned being around her and her colleagues.
It was a wonderful conversation I had with my radiation oncologist. The conversation started by his asking "What do you know?" And he thought I was pretty well read. We talked research papers for over an hour.
In his opinion there have been no conclusive studies done. The research is usually done with older men who die of other causes. This is another one of those studies.
BG
Post Edited (BikerGuy) : 7/20/2012 9:21:59 PM (GMT-6)