| Abstract: |
There is little doubt that prostate cancer is a significant public health burden. The malignancy continues to be the most common solid tumor among American men and the second leading cause of cancer death (1). However, not all prostate malignancies are deadly and, in fact, a significant number of newly detected prostate tumors are "overdiagnosed" (2). In other words, had the patient never been screened for prostate cancer, he never would have known he had the disease and, more importantly, he never would have suffered any clinical sequelae from the tumor. This observation, coupled with the fact that, to date, there are no adequately sized randomized clinical trials documenting that one active therapy is superior to another in terms of overall or disease-specific survival, has caused patients and providers to strongly consider quality of life when choosing therapy for prostate cancer. In fact, some studies have shown that survivors value quality of life to a much greater degree than the impact of treatment on survival when choosing therapy for localized prostate cancer (3). To this end, it is critical to understand both the effect of the diagnosis of prostate cancer on quality of life and also the impact of sexual dysfunction on quality of life in men with this disease. The goal of this chapter is to review the effect of prostate cancer diagnosis and post-treatment sexual dysfunction on quality of life. |
