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Follow-up data on cryotherapy for prostate cancer
In a newly published report, a team of clinicians from Columbia University Medical Center has provided data on the
10-year follow-up of a small group of patients treated with salvage or primary
cryotherapy for prostate cancer.
Clinicians claim that this is the longest reported follow-up on patients treated with cryotherapy and the first
reported 10-year outcome data.
The report authors state that the long-term results of
prostate cryotherapy<>/a> in their series indicate an 87 percent
prostate-cancer-specific survival at a median follow-up of 10 years, despite the fact that these patients were
treated with relatively early cryotherapy technology and the fact that > 50 percent of these patients met D’Amico
high-risk criteria. Overall survival at 10 years, however, was only 56.6 percent in this group of patients.
It is more and more clear that cryotherapy can, in the hands of experienced clinicians, produce high rates of
prostate cancer-specific survival — when used as primary therapy and when used in the salvage setting. However,
it is unfortunate that this 10-year follow-up study (at least in the abstract) provides no information at all
about these patients’ side effects and quality of life. Evolution of cryotherapy technology over the past
decade has certainly improved the potential of this form of therapy to deliver long-term cancer-specific outcomes,
but then so have other forms of therapy.
The optimal use of cryotherapy compared to other forms of treatment is still unknown, even though it is one of
the few forms of treatment that has ever been subjected to a “head-to-head” trial (against external beam radiotherapy)
in the primary treatment of prostate cancer. Based on data available at this time, so-called “complete gland”
cryotherapy seems to offer the greatest potential in salvage therapy after first-line radiation treatment.
The role of focal cryotherapy as a first-line treatment is still in the early stages of evolution.
NOTE: Issues on this site regarding prostate cancer and treatment options, are provided for
information only, and are not meant to substitute for the advice of your own physician or other medical professional.
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