How many cancer patients had prostatitis?

[Nik]

I was thinking today, we know that approximately 70% of CP sufferers so far, have early, previously undetected prostate cancer, but what if we could take a retrospective view at past prostate cancer patients. It would be interesting to know how many of them had chronic prostatitis, before being diagnosed with cancer and having RP. We could then look at those to see how many were relieved of their symptoms post surgery. I have read about several anecdotal reports on various cancer forums, but I guess the difficulty with these patients is that they would not necessarily be reporting back to the surgeon that their prostatitis symptoms were gone.
If we could make it standard practice for all prostate cancer surgeons to follow up the patients who had chronic prostatitis previously to cancer, we could gather a lot of data very quickly. If a large number of surgeons were willing to do this it could be a kind of trial on a mass scale.

[Arnon Krongrad, MD]

Yes, it could be a kind of trial. However, to get it standardized and launched is hardly trivial. Not to mention that men handed a brand new pathology report showing cancer typically are in no mood to fill our questionnaires about various symptoms.

That said, I mentioned the trial to one of my prostate cancer patients recently. He was about a month following his LRP for cancer. He then shared that for years he had had thes strange pelvic pains and pain shooting down his legs that were not there after his LRP. He mentioned nothing about it at the time of his cancer care. This kind of fortifies my thinking that prostatitis is the last thing on their minds when they hear they have cancer.

[Nik]

Totally understandable, the panic must be horrible for the cancer patient. I imagine standardising a trial where different surgeons with different skill levels are involved would also be a logistical nightmare full of red tape.