[Antiandrogen therapy of prostate carcinoma]

Thanks to improved examination techniques, many cases of prostate cancer are now being diagnosed in younger patients. It is therefore of ever greater importance that treatment should have no great impact on the patient's quality of life. Nonsteroidal antiandrogens have a more favorable side effect profile than surgical or pharmacological castration, since the serum concentration of testosterone remains within the normal range. Depending on the stage of the illness, they can be employed in the form of monotherapy as an adjuvant to prostatectomy or radiotherapy in local advanced prostate cancer, and as components of maximum androgens blockade.