Patients hit with aggressive prostate cancer can have surgery and have a 10-year cancer-specific survival rate of 92% according to a new study.

The research team made up of researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia concluded that surgery is equal to the survival rate after a combination of radiation and hormone deprivation therapy.

“It's long been believed that patients with aggressive prostate cancer are not candidates for surgery. We found that surgery does provide excellent long-term cancer control for this type of prostate cancer,” said Stephen Boorjian, M.D., a urologist at the Mayo Clinic at the American Urological Association meeting in Chicago on Monday.

According to Boorjian, surgery offers the opportunity to avoid or at least delay the potentially adverse health consequences of these treatments.

The researchers focused on nearly 1,850 aggressive prostate cancer patients diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer between 1988 and 2004.

Almost 67% of these patients were treated surgically and more than 32% underwent radiation therapy. Among the latter, 57% were also treated with androgen deprivation therapy.

Boorjian said further studies were needed in evaluating the differing impacts of treatments on the quality of life and non-cancer mortality to determine the best approach for patients with aggressive prostate cancer.