prostate-report.org

Research suggest therapy choice is influenced by physicians’ preferences

New research shows that the kind of treatment received by prostate cancer patients often depends on the type of specialist providing the patient’s care.

U.S. researchers evaluated data on more than 85,000 Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and olde. All of them were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1994 and 2002. Of those patients, 50 percent were seen only by urologists, 44 percent by urologists and radiation oncologists, 3 percent by urologists and medical oncologists, and 3 percent by all three specialists.

The researchers found a strong association between the type of treatment and the type of specialist consulted, according to a news release from the journal’s publisher.

According to the report published in the March 8 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, within nine months after diagnosis, 21 percent of patients had surgery to remove the prostate and surrounding tissue (radical prostatectomy), 42 percent had received radiation therapy, 17 percent underwent a hormone therapy called primary androgen deprivation and 20 percent chose no treatment (”watchful waiting”).