Robot-assisted prostate surgery controls cancer for 10 years

YouTube courtesy DaVinciSurgery.com

CANCER DIGEST – July 18, 2014 – Robot-assisted surgery to remove cancerous prostate glands is effective in controlling the disease for 10 years, according to a new study in European Urology. The Henry Ford Health System research study followed 483 consecutive men who had cancer that had not spread outside the prostate. All underwent robot-assisted radical prostectomy as their first treatment between 2001 to 2003, the earliest years of Henry Ford's robot-assisted prostate surgery program.
Using several standard measures of cancer-treatment success including PSA, incidence of cancer spread beyond the prostate (metastasis), and cancer-specific survival, the researchers found that 98.8 percent of the patients survived cancer for 10 years after their surgery. In addition, the researcher found that postoperative PSA and severity of the cancer were good predictors of recurrence. “Disease severity and postoperative PSA measurements can guide physicians in identifying the varying levels of cancer recurrence risk,” Mireya Diaz, Ph.D., director of Biostatistics at the Henry Ford’s Vattikuti Urology Institute (VUI) and lead author of the study said in a press release. “This includes those patients who can best benefit from secondary treatment as well as long-term monitoring.”

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