Survival in prostate cancer patients > or = 70 years after radical prostatectomy and comparison to younger patients.

Purpose: The purpose of our study was to evaluate and compare the survival in prostate cancer (PCa) patients who underwent radical prostatectomy (RP) < and > or = 70 years.
Methods: In a prospective cancer database, 626 patients with PCa underwent RP. Patients were categorised into two groups as follows: <70 years (n = 526, young) and > or = 70 years (n = 100, old). We evaluated the histopathological features as well as the clinical follow-up after RP. The median age was 64.4 years (41.1-80.1 years). The median follow-up was 5.3 years (0.1-15.8 years). The preoperative median prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels for young and old patients were 8.8 ng/ml (0.4-230.0 ng/ml) and 9.9 ng/ml (0.3-165.0 ng/ml).
Results: Serum PSA levels were not different comparing the two groups (P = 0.356). The young and old patients had an organ-confined PCa in 56.3 and 58.0% (P = 0.826). They had well and moderately differentiated tumours in 78.7 and 75.0% of cases and poorly differentiated tumours in 21.3 and 25.0% (P = 0.198). Young and old patients had an ECOG > 1 in 2.3% and 7.0% of cases (P = 0.024). A 10-year PSA-free survival for young and old patients was 51.8 and 57.4% (P = 0.721), 10-year-disease-specific survival was 92.3 and 97.6% (P = 0.342), 10-year metastasis-free survival was 86.9 and 89.7% (P = 0.713), and 10-year-overall-survival was 78.1 and 71.2% (P = 0.565). Besides classical risk factors for adverse outcome on multivariate analysis, such as preoperative PSA-levels, extracapsular extension, tumour grade, and positive margin status, age was not a predictor for PSA-free- (P = 0.407), disease-specific- (P = 0.257), and overall-survival (P = 0.121).
Conclusions: In a well-selected healthy, elderly population survival outcome is not worse than that of younger patients with a follow-up of 5.3 years and curative treatment should be recommended.