Intervention in Prostate Cancer: Slight Advantages for Radical Prostatectomy

The document discusses two separate studies. The first study suggests that early-onset androgenetic alopecia (AGA) in men might be an early indicator of future urinary tract symptoms and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). In this Spanish-British case-control study, 45 men aged between 35 and 65 with early hair loss but no urinary obstruction symptoms were compared to 42 control subjects. The study found that men with AGA had significantly higher prostate volumes (29.65 ml vs. 20.24 ml) and lower maximum urinary flow rates (14.5 ml/s vs. 22.45 ml/s) than controls. Nearly half (48.9%) of the AGA patients met the diagnostic criteria for BPH, compared to only 4.8% in the control group. The second study, involving 10,429 men with localized prostate cancer, found that radical prostatectomy (RP) was associated with a statistically significant improvement in overall survival and prostate cancer-specific survival compared to external beam radiation therapy (RT) and brachytherapy (BT). The adjusted 10-year overall survival rates were 88.9% for RP, 82.6% for RT, and 81.7% for BT, with prostate cancer-specific mortality rates of 1.8%, 2.9%, and 2.3%, respectively. The study concluded that while the difference in treatment success was not substantial, RP had a slight advantage over RT and BT in terms of survival outcomes.