Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy in men after skin cancer. The incidence of prostate cancer increases with age, and it is one of the leading causes of death attributable to cancer in men above 60 years of age. Nonetheless, many prostate cancers have a relatively mild severity with limited impact on life expectancy. For this reason, prostate cancer treatment has to be individualized, taking into consideration pre-existing comorbidities and life expectancy of the affected men, offering treatments that range from surveillance up to multimodal treatments including surgery, radiation, and/or androgen deprivation therapy for localized disease, as well as a variety of treatments for more advanced stages. In the following chapter, we will discuss the particularities of prostate cancer in the older population, and we will describe the available treatments for each stage of disease. Furthermore, we will focus on the implications of frailty on treatment decision-making and on how to focus not only on longevity but also incorporating quality of life into decision-making.