Surgery of prostatic carcinoma.

Seven surgical treatments for the management of prostatic cancer are briefly reviewed. A transurethral prostatic resection is of value, not only for the relief of bladder outlet obstruction, but also in the definitive management of Stage A lesions. The long-term survival for patients with Stage C disease treated by radical prostatectomy plus interstitial irradiation demonstrates the efficacy of this mode of therapy. Pelvic lymphadenectomy has yielded valuable information on the stage of the disease; long-term survival was related to the presence of lymph node metastases. Lymphadenectomy may have contributed to the 5-year survival rate of those with regional lymph node involvement, but there is no direct evidence to support this view. The early results in patients treated by cryosurgery indicate that this mode of therapy can be very effective in the ablation of the local lesion and may very well have a useful place in the surgical armamentarium for the management of prostatic cancer.