A decade of experience with chemotherapy for prostate cancer

Chemotherapy for prostate cancer has been demonstrated by the Clinical Trials Program of the NPCP and by other cooperative and individual studies both as single antitumor agents and combinations of agents to provide additional benefit to patients with advanced disease that no longer respond to hormonal therapy, markedly more so than could be provided by a host of palliative and real or synthetic hormonal agents commonly used in this type of patient. There is also some evidence to support the premise that adding antitumor agents to hormones as initial treatment for metastatic disease is more effective than waiting for the ultimate hormone failure, at least in patients with poorer prognosis.