Statistics of PCa left untreated?

JBella70
JBella70 Member Posts: 4 Member
edited June 25 in Prostate Cancer #1

I've had no trouble finding statistics on survivability of various levels of PCa after treatment. They'll typically show percentages for 10 and 15 years. What I haven't seen is the equivalent stats for the various levels of PCa when left untreated. Or even statistics of various levels of untreated PCa metastasizing over 10 and 15 years. Has anyone seen anything like this?

Thanks.

Comments

  • Clevelandguy
    Clevelandguy Member Posts: 1,148 Member

    Hi,

    Probably too many variables to make any kind of prediction. Age, aggressiveness, location of the cancer & other medical issues to name a few. To provide a statistic you need data, probably not a lot of people refuse treatment so not much data to make predictions.

    Dave

  • Old Salt
    Old Salt Member Posts: 1,467 Member

    One needs to find statistics for each Gleason score, among others.

    For instance, many with a Gleason score of 6 will not die from prostate cancer, if left untreated.

  • MJH320
    MJH320 Member Posts: 7 Member

    I have had the same question. I'm 70 years of age and 'quality of life' considerations are important to me. On average, at this point, my life expectancy is ~85. If I could go without treatment, get 15 more 'quality' years where prostate cancer doesn't inhibit my life quality, nor kill me, I'd consider it. I have Gleason 8 tumors confined to my prostate now; they're prime candidates for metastasis, and if it gets in the bones, it may crimp my quality of life style. I imagine there's little telling where it will spread. Could keep track of PSAs and periodically have a PSMA-PET done to locate any metastasis; that's expensive - not sure how often Medicare would cover that.

  • JBella70
    JBella70 Member Posts: 4 Member

    I'm in the same situation as you. I'm 70 as well with intermediate grade cancer confined to the prostate. It would be great to see some compiled statistics in the form of how the books show the post surgery statistics.

    I did find this link (below) but haven't read the whole article yet. It's a study so it's not written for the lay person.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9454626/#:~:text=The%20crude%20probability%20of%20death,of%20prostate%20cancer%20(Table%201)