The prognosis of prostatic cancer in the younger man.

The effect of age on the prognosis of prostatic cancer is uncertain. Younger patients are commonly assumed to have a worse prognosis. To investigate this impression, survival rates were calculated for two groups of patients with histologically proven prostatic cancer aged under 60 years (46 patients) and 65 to 74 years (193 patients). Age-corrected actuarial survival curves for the two groups were not significantly different when tested by the log rank method. Similar curves constructed for well and poorly differentiated tumours, the presence of metastases and different treatment groups were also not significantly different. The survival of younger patients with prostatic cancer is not significantly worse than that of older patients, nor is it better.