Total androgen ablation: American experience.

In conclusion, the intergroup study in the US, as well as preliminary results of the Anandron and leuprolide study, would support the view that combined androgen blockade is better than monotherapy in achieving clinical responses, prolonging the time to progression, and improving the survival rate. This improvement in survival rate is not a huge advance but is a step in the right direction. Future clinical trials are needed to evaluate newer methods to improve survival rates. The results also open up the possibility of employing this combined androgen blockade in earlier stages of prostate cancer in order to delay progression of the cancer and perhaps improve patient survival. Only carefully constructed clinical trials will be able to answer these questions.