MEMORANDUM FOR: Science Writers and Editors on the Journal Press List: Accuracy of Death Certificates of Prostate Cancer Patients Questioned

Extract

April 13, 2000 (EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE 4 P.M. EST April 18)

Assignment of cause of death can be subjective. A new study suggests that assignment of cause of death in men with prostate cancer may depend on the treatment given.

A study in the April 19 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that, among prostate cancer patients, cause of death was attributed to cancers other than prostate cancer more often in men who received aggressive treatment compared with men who were treated with watchful waiting.

Prostate cancer tends to affect older men and to progress slowly. Since the prevalence of other diseases increases with advancing age, other causes of death contribute to the death rate among prostate cancer patients. Accurate determination of the true causes of death in older men dying with prostate cancer may thus be difficult.

Craig J. Newschaffer, Ph.D., Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, Md., and Department of Community Health, Saint Louis University School of Public Health, St. Louis, Mo., and colleagues addressed this question by studying two groups. The first consisted of 1,207 men aged 67 years or older who had lived in Virginia and were diagnosed with prostate cancer from 1987 through 1989. The second group consisted of 2,906 men aged 67 years or older who were hospitalized in Virginia from 1987 through 1989 with benign prostatic hyperplasia (an enlarged but noncancerous prostate) who died of various causes.