Objectives: This study is designed to estimate the prostate cancer-specific mortality according to patient age and tumor grade in an unselected population of patients with prostate cancer who mostly received deferred or direct hormonal treatment as initial treatment.
Methods: The study population was composed of 6514 patients diagnosed with prostate cancer during 1971 to 1987 in northern Sweden. For those who died during follow-up, the cause of death was determined from the comprehensive Swedish registry data (population registries and causes of death registry).
Results: About 85% of these patients died during the 7 to 23 years of follow-up, and the prostate cancer-specific mortality was estimated to be 55%. Age at diagnosis was found to be a strong predictor of prostate cancer death. Patients diagnosed before the age of 60 had an 80% risk of dying of prostate cancer, whereas those over 80 years of age at diagnosis had less than a 50% risk of prostate cancer-related death.
Conclusions: The prostate cancer mortality is high but decreases with older age at diagnosis. We found, using data from the causes of death registry, that the relative survival and the cause-specific survival of these patients were compatible with each other.