A Study of the Prognosis of Prostate Cancer Patients Over 80 Years of Age

Abstract

With the ageing of the population in Japan, an increasing number of elderly prostate cancer patients will require treatment. However, the elderly often have comorbidities, which can make treatment decisions for prostate cancer patients difficult. Therefore, we investigated prostate cancer deaths and risk factors among patients aged 80 years or older at diagnosis of prostate cancer at our hospital. Of 532 prostate cancer cases diagnosed and treated at our hospital between January2011 and December 2018, 90 cases were included. The median observation period was 54 months and 13 (14.4%) patients died of prostate cancer. The overall 5-year cancer-specific survival rate was 86.7%, with M1 (47.1%) and GS≥9 (71.9%) as significant risk factors on multivariate analysis. Patients with metastatic prostate cancer, even those older than 80 years, should be cautiously started on treatment after explaining to the patient and family that the chance of prostate cancer death is not low. Even in patients with localized prostate cancer, four out of 45 (8.9%) high-risk prostate cancer patients died of prostate cancer, suggesting that curative treatment is an option, depending on their life expectancy.