Is it true 1 in 6 men after surgery still have or cancer comes back?

I don't have the "real" statistics at hand, nor the links to the studies, so all I have is memory and opinion. I thought I remembered reading that even a higher percentage of men will have recurrence - something like 23-25%, but just a general sense from memory. Also, the patient's G-score prior to surgery would have a major impact on that statistic, as men with higher Gleason scores would have greater probability of remote mets than, say, a G6 case. I'm sure someone will come by later this morning with real data, but your doc is probably close.

As for who stays on the site and who drifts away, I think you are probably right. My experience over nearly 15 years at another medical support site is that the vast majority of patients who have the straightforward, low risk cases will come in for initial information but after treatment will drift away and just get on with their lives. There are some though, like myself in the case of the other site (and probably here as well) who feel so profoundly thankful for the support they received that they remain active and try to help others as they were helped early in their journeys.

you have a mixture of guys using this site. some are "cured" and others are not. i'm in my seventh year of remission. I figure I have a 50-50 chance of the cancer returning: it either will or it won't. the one in six odds wouldn't surprise me.

ed

Cancer reoccurance all depends on how early you catch the cancer, and the gleason grade. I found mine in 2007 after watching my PSA go from 2.9 in 2005 to 4.5 in 2007 when I had my biospsy.

I was lucky in that I found mine before it escaped the prostate and I had a low gleason score of 6. After surgery, the pathology said I still had a G6 with negative margins. The cancer was 4 mm from escaping, and my surgeon said if I had waited 6 months or another year to have my surgery, today I might still be fighting this cancer.

It has been 9 1/2 years and my psa's have all been 0, so my uro told I can consider myself cured.

40 - I guess it also depends upon how long you intend to live. Kidding aside, treatments like the current SBRT protocols for low-risk and favorable intermediate risk patients are showing something like 95+% non-recurrence at 9 years. (TA tells us that the 10-year study should be out soon.) If that is the case, and you are 70 years old now, there is a 95% chance you won't have any recurrence by the time you are about 80. If you did have a recurrence at 80, and it is low-grade slow-growing cancer, would you worry very much (assuming that you remained asymptomatic)?

It's cancer...there is a reason why no doctor ever uses the word cure when talking about it.