Different types of prostate cancer treatment – surgery, radiation therapy or hormone – can be long-term impact on the quality of lives of men, especially about sexual function and urinary problems.
The conclusion was the result of a recent study published in the Journal of Urology. This study found that there is no treatment that has a powerful impact to improve quality of life of men, including energy level, pain, level of emotional and physical abilities every day such as walking, climbing stairs, or carrying the load.
The study involved 1269 U.S. men for four years after they get treatment early stage prostate cancer.
Most (of 60%) experienced a radical prostatectomy and surgical removal of the prostate gland. While the other 17% get brachytherapy, ie the internal form of radiation therapy where radioactive ’seeds planted’ into the prostate gland, and the other 12% get the delivery of external radiation.
In addition, 6% of patients receiving the combination of two radiation therapy and 5% of other patients treated with drugs that block hormones cause prostate cancer to develop.
In addition, this treatment is known to cause erectile dysfunction, and it turns out surgery and radiation often cause incontinence. “But only few know that this problem affects the quality of life of men in the long run, ’said researchers led by Dr. George J Huang from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
This issue is important enough to remember this while prostate cancer is one of the most common cancer in men affecting approximately 160 per 100,000 people each year and kills 26 of 100,000 people. Most of these tumors grow so slowly and not causing any damage.
In this study, the researchers found that in general, men who undergo surgery or other forms of radiation, have urinary symptoms that worsen during the first year after treatment. This is based on their responses to a questionnaire of quality of life standards. Among these groups, most surgical patients have many problems.
Then in the second year after treatment, surgery and radiation groups all showed a general improvement in urinary symptoms – although they did not fully return to their initial ratings, based on their quality of life. The extent to which people were “disturbed” by their urinary problems are also fading.
Men who undergo hormone therapy showed a different pattern: they tend to report about the gradual worsening of their urinary function over four years.
The findings of Huang and colleagues is somewhat surprising and have good reasons not yet clear. They speculate that hormone therapy might have an effect on the pelvic floor muscles and bladder from time to time so that it can have urinary problems – in a way similar to the natural process of decline in estrogen that can affect women after menopause, urinary detention.
When it came to sexual function, all groups reported a decrease in the first year after treatment – with the fall dramatically seen among surgical patients. However, surgery patients reported improvement during the second year, while the other treatment groups did not.
Moreover, while men in all treatment groups tended to say that they are more concerned with sexual problems after treatment than before, their level of satisfaction decreased when it comes to the purpose of their sexual function.
“This finding,” Huang and colleagues wrote, “provides indirect evidence to suggest that temporary erectile dysfunction may usually appear in patients as a way of adjusting themselves to the various changes.”
If talking about the overall quality of life ratings, there is no treatment for prostate cancer that seems to have a significant impact.
“All types of treatments having a negative impact about urinary and sexual function and is less impact on the welfare of the whole meaning of life,” wrote the researchers.
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