Re: Surgery Best Option for Survival After Prostate Cancer -- Medsca

[Guest guest]

I still find myself being confounded by the low quality of too many

medical research articles.

As a retired physical scientist/engineer, my reaction to all too many

are that they never would have made publication in the hard sciences.

This one is a case in point. Another retrospective study that

concludes that surgery for prostate cancer results in increased survival

compared to doing nothing, their definition of watchful waiting. Duh!

This has virtually no relevence to the decisions that today's men

have to make when confronted with a diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Their 'watchful waiting' is totally unrelated to today's Active Surveillance.

Unfortunately, 'evidence based' studies of outcomes of medical practices

20 years old may generate interesting statistics but have provide very little

comparative insight as to the potential results of current treatments, whether

surgery, or radiation, or delayed treatment by proactive Active Surveillance.

We are left with the uncertainty of looking at 5 to 10 year limited data sets

using more current treatments. Maybe not statistically satisfying, but

certainly more relevent to today's decisions.

One is tempted to conclude that some grant reviewers and journal editors

are more interested in repeating 10 to 20 year old lessons of the past

than promoting current knowledge of use to today's patients.

Why? Could it be that selling more journals and helping peers to pad their

bibliographies is more important the providing relevent knowledge to patients?

hmmmmmm....

The Best to You and Yours!

Jon in Nevada

In a message dated 11/6/2008 1:23:23 AM Pacific Standard Time, ProstateCancerSupport writes:

Re: Surgery Best Option for Survival After Prostate Cancer -- Medsca

Terry appropriately commented:

<snip> The researchers noted that within subgroups, the higher rate oflong-term mortality associated with radiotherapy and watchful waiting seemedto be limited to men younger than 70 years, as well as to those with poorlydifferentiated tumors <snip> Hmmm so! Men with poorly differentiated tumorshave a poorer survival rate! That's a novel idea.

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