Phenom said...
Virtually all of the men in your study died within 32 years? As I said before, if you're studying a cohort of older men only, my guess is that medical intervention of any kind for any cancers, heart disease, lung disease, etc--will analyze statistically to show no significant survival effect. So one response to that would be to say that treatment for any of these has no effect on that cohort. So why bother? But break the cohort down according to age, physical condition, other systemic health problems, etc., and you might come up with more useful information for individuals in making their decisions.
Phenom,
The median age of the study John T quoted was 72. Those 223 men were followed for 32 years until all died (almost all since 3 are still alive). The age breakdown was:
<65 34
65 - 70 65
71 - 75 37
>75 87
54.5% of men 70 yo and under experienced progression during those 32 years and 25.3% of them died of PCa. This represents more than double the rate than older men.
29.8% of men 71 yo and over experienced progression and 10.5% died of PCa.
This supports the notion that given enough time and not dying of a competing disease, PCa can progress through different stages of dedifferentiation in a step-wise manner from well differentiated to poorly differentiated disease. No question that younger age at diagnosis even with earlier stages of the disease is an increased risk of progression.
RalphV