Men pick robotic surgery for prostate cancer despite risks

Pretty much every medical organization has told men to back off on screening for prostate cancer, because it can lead to unneeded treatment, including surgery that can leave a man incontinent and impotent. But it's hard to resist a robot. Men who have been diagnosed with low-grade prostate cancer increasingly choose expensive newer treatments including robotic surgery and a radiation treatment called intensity-modulated radiotherapy, or IMRT, even though they are not likely to benefit from those treatments, according to a in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.