Quality of life issues relating to endocrine treatment options.

Recent interest has focused on the use of hormone therapy in prostate cancer for both the management of patients with non-metastatic disease and as a neoadjuvant or adjuvant to curative therapies. This has resulted in patients with fewer symptoms being treated for longer periods of time. Endocrine treatments for prostate cancer, such as castration, combined androgen blockade and non-steroidal antiandrogen monotherapy, have shown similar results in terms of time to progression and survival. The main difference between these treatments is their impact on patients' quality of life. Instruments for measuring health-related quality of life should assess both overall and disease-specific quality of life. Data from two large studies of bicalutamide monotherapy show that this non-steroidal antiandrogen is associated with significant health-related quality of life advantages in the treatment of patients with locally advanced (M0) disease compared with castration, suggesting that this treatment may benefit patients with early disease. Bicalutamide was favoured in 8 out of 9 evaluable quality of life dimensions, and this was statistically significant for sexual interest and physical capacity. Endocrine treatments with minimal adverse effects on quality of life will be increasingly favoured for patients with non-metastatic disease who are being treated for longer periods of time.