William J Brown - News Room Administrators Staff

The study was published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine and found that for those under 65, surgery cuts the death rate by more than 50%.

Prostate cancer is the second-most common type of cancer in American men, after skin cancer. About 60,000 Americans undergo prostate cancer surgery each year

But the findings may not apply to everyone. The researchers found evidence that men 65 and older are not harmed by being in the watchful waiting group.

The latest study followed Scandinavian men who were under age 75 for a decade following their surgery. It showed that surgery reduces deaths from any cause, not just prostate cancer, by nearly half.

9.5 percent of those who got surgery and 15 percent of those in the watchful waiting group died within 10 years of diagnoses.

However the greatest benefit appeared to be among men under 65, where the watchful waiting group had more than double the death rate of the surgery group.