Total androgen ablation: European experience. The EORTC GU Group.

Zoladex plus flutamide significantly delays the time to progression (subjective, objective, first progression) compared with orchiectomy, but no difference in survival (death from all causes or from malignant disease) could be detected. Thus, a delay in the appearance of progression has not improved survival. In fact, the duration of survival after progression tends to be shorter on Zoladex plus flutamide. There is thus no evidence to suggest any survival benefit with Zoladex plus flutamide. The quality control of our data revealed acknowledged problems in defining responses in patients with advanced prostate cancer. The review of the Bone Scan Committee provided the data for Tables 5 to 7. These data must provoke some reflections and emphasize once again the heterogeneity of the studied patient population. Table 4 on pain response after 4 weeks is just one of the many items to be analyzed by the committees for response criteria and quality of life. We expect that the other trials face similar problems. More work and patience are needed to obtain a firm answer to this clinical problem. These efforts will never be wasted, however, because the combined results of these trials will increase our knowledge of the treated history of prostate cancer and will, we hope, indicate a net treatment benefit in some subsets of patients. An individually tailored treatment for each patient selected from the anonymous mass of cases of advanced prostate cancer would be the highest reward of our continued collaboration with all the study groups.