Quality of life after prostate surgery showed gains and trade-offs
Reported overall improvement coexisted with declining sexual function, while several other outcomes showed no clear change.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
The review reported better overall quality of life and emotional functioning after radical prostatectomy, alongside worse sexual functioning. Social functioning, urinary symptoms and pain did not show statistically significant changes. These mixed results describe changes after surgery; they do not establish that a particular surgical approach gives better quality of life.
This abstract-based summary relies on the authors' descriptions because several confidence intervals are ambiguously formatted. The before-and-after comparison also cannot isolate surgery's contribution from other changes over time.
What researchers found
Overall quality-of-life questionnaire scores
One year after radical prostatectomy versus before surgery. The abstract's standardized-effect confidence intervals have ambiguous notation.
Overall versus specific outcomes
The researchers used questionnaires covering general quality of life and prostate-related symptoms. An overall improvement can therefore coexist with deterioration in a particular domain, as occurred for sexual functioning in this review.
Comparing surgical approaches
The laparoscopic or robotic subgroup showed a statistically significant change, while the open-surgery subgroup did not. That difference in significance does not itself show that the approaches differ; a direct comparison is needed.
The original publication
Quality of Life in Prostate Cancer Patients Following Radical Prostatectomy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
Seputra KP, Daryanto B, Budaya TN et al.
Asian Pac J Cancer Prev · 2025
- PubMed ID
- 40952272
- Record checked
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