My father has been diagnosed with secondary spinal cancer that has spread from prostate. They have given palliative radiotherapy just 1 dose and have told us they will do no more and there is no treatment-please can you give an estimated life expectancy. He is 79 and his legs have been affected already. They wanted to put rods in his spine but were unable to do so and opted for pain relieving decompression instead. it sounds pretty advanced to us. Any estimation of life expectancy would be helpful, Many thanks
Hello welcome to Chat Doctor. Bone metastasis in spine is common problem in prostate cancer, It is staged as stage IV which is advanced stage as you rightly mentioned. Radiation therapy has been reported to be effective in palliating painful bone metastases with response in 80-90% patients. Apart from this hormonal therapy are very effective in prostate cancer which control growth of tumor and receive symptoms. Survival depends on so many factors like general condition of patient, type number and distribution of metastasis etc. Studies report that around 25% patient with stage 4 disease will survive 5 years or longer.