Quality of life in patients undergoing salvage procedures for locally recurrent prostate cancer

Background and Objectives: As patients are being treated for prostate cance r at a younger age, a significant number of them will ultimately fail the p rimary treatment and will be candidates for potentially curative salvage th erapy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of salvage ther apy for locally recurrent prostate cancer upon the patients' quality of lif e. Methods: A cohort of 68 men with locally recurrent prostate cancer undergoi ng salvage treatment was included in this analysis. Data were collected for the study by mailing the subjects a self-administered questionnaire that i ncluded a General Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT-G) and a Pr ostate Cancer Treatment Outcome Questionnaire (FACT-P). Group comparisons w ere conducted using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results: Overall, 50% and 88.6% of patients were free of biochemical recurr ence in the salvage surgery (SS) and salvage radiotherapy (SRt) group, resp ectively (P = 0.4). The physical well-being (PWB) subscale of FACT-G was si gnificantly higher for the SRt patients (P = 0.008). Using the Trial Outcom e Index Prostate subscale. the Trial Outcome Index Incontinence Urinary sco res, and the Functional Assessment of Incontinence Therapy-Urinary score gr oup comparisons, patients in the SRt group had a higher quality of life tha n patients in the SS group (P = 0.038, P = 0.001, and P = 0.001, respective ly). Conclusions: In the current study, patients with clinically localized prost ate cancer who are at high risk for local disease recurrence may have a tre nd toward better disease-free survival and a better urinary continence rate s if the primary treatment is radical prostatectomy rather than radiation t herapy. J. Surg. Oncol. 1998:69:156-161. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.