Prostate cancer surgery once again found to be useless at saving lives, but successful at destroying sexual health

Most men who undergo surgery for prostate cancer derive absolutely no benefit from the treatment, and instead become twice as likely to develop incontinence or impotence compared to men who skip the surgery. These are the eye-opening findings of a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), which reaffirms once again that prostate cancer surgery is basically just medical quackery.

For his study, Dr. Timothy Wilt of the University of Minnesota (UM) School of Medicine evaluated 731 men diagnosed with prostate cancer, some of whom were told to have their prostates removed, and some of whom were told to simply undergo routine observation by their doctors. All the men were tracked and monitored in the years following their initial diagnosis.

10 years after their tumors were first discovered, 5.8 percent of the men who underwent prostate surgery ended up dying, while 8.4 percent of the men who were monitored apart from surgery ended up dying. According to the data, 47 percent of the men who underwent surgery died during the actual study, while 50 percent of the men who were monitored apart from surgery died during the study.

After accounting for a margin of statistical error, the findings reveal that, regardless of whether or not a man diagnosed with prostate cancer undergoes surgery, his chances of dying are roughly the same as if he does nothing. But men who choose to forgo surgery are half as likely to suffer from urinary incontinence or erectile dysfunction.

"We think our results apply to the vast majority of men diagnosed with prostate cancer today," said Dr. Wilt to the Chicago Tribune. He and others in the field of oncology are realizing that most men who receive prostate cancer surgery do not need it, and that undergoing this treatment could lead to other, often permanent, side effects and complications.

Since the risk of dying from prostate cancer among those diagnosed with the condition is a mere three percent, opting for surgery, as many men do, is more often than not a mistake. Worse, many detected prostate tumors are not even malignant, a fact that, if more widely known, would probably deter many men from choosing invasive surgery.

Prevailing thoughts about cancer; however, seem to often override logical consideration and decision-making, as many men rush in to "do something" without fully evaluating the risks and benefits. This is also true in regards to the prostate cancer screenings, which have similarly been shown to be unreliable, and to often result in needless surgery and other treatments.