Just keeping an eye on prostate cancer results in the same 10-year survival rate as treating it, a study suggests. The UK researchers warned too many men were having procedures that damaged their sex life and caused incontinence. A trial of 1,643 men with small prostate cancers resulted in the same 99% survival rate after a decade for those who had had surgery, radiotherapy or simply monitored the tumour. Experts said the results were “extremely reassuring” for men. “It’s a global problem that patients are over-treated,” Prof Freddie Hamdy from the University of Oxford, told the BBC. “It’s understandable, if a 55-year-old man is told they have cancer, and they have a family, they don’t want to take any risks.” In the trial, men whose prostate cancer had been detected by testing for a chemical – prostate-specific antigen (PSA) – in the blood were either monitored, had surgery to remove the prostate or radiotherapy to kill the tumour.
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