What is the Prostate Cancer Life Expectancy?

Prostate cancer life expectancy is dependant on a number of factors. These include the stage of progression of the cancer when it is first diagnosed, the treatment chosen, the general health and lifestyle of the patient.

Factors which increase the likelihood of getting prostate cancer include being over 50 years of age, being African American as compared to being Caucasian, having a family history of prostate cancer, having high levels of testosterone in your body and having had a vasectomy.

Diet is another factor; if you have consistently eaten a diet high in saturated fats and processed foods, you are more likely to get any one of a variety of cancers, including prostate cancer.

Basically, prostate cancer life expectancy is decided by how early your cancer is diagnosed and the effectiveness of the treatment. Tests to determine if cancer cells exist in the prostate are now common; these simple tests have had a dramatic effect on the statistics for the life expectancy of prostate cancer patients.

Early testing can find abnormal cells in the prostate, which leads to early intervention and treatment, giving a greater chance of success.

Often cancer cells can be present in the prostate gland without giving any symptoms or discomfort. The first symptoms are usually problems with urination or maintaining an erection. If these signs are ignored, the problems increase and then symptoms like blood in the semen or the urine could be noticed. Early symptoms should not be ignored, as treatment is more successful if started when the tumor is small and cancer cells are only in the prostate.

Life expectancy is generally better for prostate cancer patients than those with almost any other cancer. Prostate cancer is very slow growing and most are diagnosed in the early stages, before it has spread, or metastasized, to other areas of the body. In the US, only 3% of all men diagnosed with prostate cancer will die from their cancer.

One of the statistics used in calculating possible life expectancy with any cancer, is the five year survival figure. This refers to the time period of five years from the date of diagnosis, and the percentage of patients who are still alive at this mark; it is a common benchmark for cancer patients.

The 5 year life expectancy for prostate cancer is 100%; the 10 year survival rate is 92% and the 15 year is 70%. These statistics give us an over-all life expectancy for prostate cancer patients of ten years; a strong statistic when compared to the life expectancy of other forms of cancer.

Recent research has shown that these life expectancy figures may not be accurate for those patients who are treated with a radical prostatectomy, referred to as RP. No figures were available for the life expectancy of RP patients, as distinct from all other prostatic cancer patients.

Research conducted by Pierre Karakiewicz of the University of Montreal's Health Center, looked at the 10 years survival rates of 9,678 prostate cancer patients who had been treated with RP. These were compared with a control group of 5,955 prostate cancer patients who were treated in other ways and who had no symptoms of recurrence of their disease.

The findings showed that these patients did not fit the life expectancy tables, their life expectancy being noticeably lower than the general statistics suggest. No reason was given for why these predictors are not accurate for RP patients with localized cancer of the prostate.