[Quality of life after radical prostatectomy]

Prostate cancer is increasingly detected at early stages and patients can choose various forms of treatment which have favorable survival outcomes. Radical prostatectomy is a major procedure for treating early stage prostate cancer curatively. The instruments of measuring health related QOL (HRQOL) accurately for early prostate cancer treatment were developed. Some of the instruments were useful in Japan after translating into Japanese and pilot testing. Many authors have reported QOL data after radical prostatectomy. These data suggested that general and urinary domains of HRQOL recovered rapidly after radical prostatectomy, but recovery of sexual domains of HRQOL took longer. Recently several authors have reported that HRQOL were affected with ethnic and cultural differences. These results strongly suggested a need for longitudinal surveys in Japanese patients.