PROSTATE CANCER SURGERY? Lies, lies and more damned lies.
Bert Vorstman, MD,MS,FAAP,FRACS,FACS
www.urologyweb.com
"Choosing prostate cancer surgery was the worst decision of my life" patient
There is no creditable scientific evidence for significant curative life extension in men treated for prostate cancer through radical prostate surgery/robotics alone. In addition, this one surgery is associated with more permanent complications than probably any other operation ever, performed on humans. It's an operation that is often treated as an emergency, is without merit and is probably without equal in providing false hope. Unbelievably, this high-risk surgical technology for prostate cancer treatment was simply given a pass by the FDA without being rigorously and scientifically evaluated for risk or reward.
The current lack of progress towards a sincere and definitive resolution to determining which of the few prostate cancers demand treatment, and which treatment if necessary, is confounded by a preponderance of short term (5-15 years) clinical studies hopelessly jaundiced by treatment philosophies, egos and money. For many men, their small area of prostate cancer (which was never going to behave like a cancer we normally think of) never required treatment. For many other men, their prostate cancer treatment with surgery/robotics was a journey to hell and back.
The absence of any real significant scientific validation for prostate cancer surgery/robotics in bringing about curative life extension or reduction in prostate cancer-specific mortality, is an indictment against prostate cancer surgeons worldwide and should stop every man in his tracks.
Lost in all the years of so-called "data" gathering from a multitude of non-scientifically run clinical studies around the world since the radical surgery was first described by Young in 1905, has been the most basic and fundamental issue of whether prostate cancer surgery/robotics actually extends the life of a man afflicted with prostate cancer in a curative manner. That there is no evidence to support surgery for treatment of prostate cancer has not tamed the proponents of surgery from disseminating opaque prostate cancer information where sensationalism, half truths, downright lies, bias, obvious conflicts of interest, use of the word "data" to imply real results and use of marginal statistical significance to misconstrue real benefit has been spun, distilled and re-spun. Much of this so-called "scientific" prostate cancer surgery information now belongs in the category of junk science.
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Additional Links of Interest:
After Effects of Treatment
Localized Prostate Cancer, Treatment Options and Their Complications - Blog Post
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