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The number
of patients who are cured when they opt for cryotherapy when
prostate cancer recurs after initial treatment with radiation
"seems to be small," according to researchers at
the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The researchers,
reporting in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, said that while
the use of cryotherapy, a surgical procedure that destroys
the cancer tumor by freezing, can benefit some patients with
locally recurrent prostate cancer, "patient selection
is important."
The researchers
analyzed results from 131 men who had salvage cryotherapy
for locally recurrent prostate cancer from 1992 to 1995. The
patients were followed for an average of 4.8 years, by which
point 60 percent of them had rising PSA levels, an indicator
that the disease had again recurred.
Among
the conclusions of the researchers:
- Men
who had unsuccessfully tried hormone therapy were most likely
to fail cryotherapy.
- Men
with higher Gleason scores were more apt to fail cryotherapy.
- Men
with PSA levels of 10 or more were likely to fail cryotherapy.
The researchers
suggested that cryotherapy was most successful in patients
with relatively low PSA and Gleason scores despite recurrence
of their prostate cancer.
Source:
Prostate Cancer
Week of June 30, 2002
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