By the way, I just found out it costs $28 to view the article for 24 hours.
Since authors don't get paid to write these things, I find this a good
reason why government needs to stop supporting research the journals then
get paid big bucks for even letting your read the tax-supported results.  It
is a shame and a sham.  Let us hope Oxford Press and the others go out of
business shortly with open access journals.

I tried accessing it through Northwestern, but they don't have anything
from that Journal newer than February.

I found the abstract using Medline/Pubmed and it says the following

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BACKGROUND: The frequently indolent nature of early-stage prostate
cancer in older men and in men with low- or moderate-grade tumors and
the demonstration that the survival benefits of radical prostatectomy
are primarily among men younger than 65 years have led to concerns about
prostate cancer overtreatment. METHODS: Using data from 13 Surveillance,
Epidemiology, and End Results registries, we performed a retrospective
cohort study of 71,602 men who were diagnosed with localized or regional
prostate cancer between 2000 and 2002. We quantified the incidence of
initial curative therapy (i.e., surgery or radiation therapy) among men
with lower-risk cancers as defined by their limited likelihood of either
dying from expectantly managed prostate cancer or achieving a survival
benefit from local therapy. Stratified analyses and multinomial logistic
regression models were used to quantify the absolute and relative rates
of curative therapy among men in various age-grade strata. All
statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS: We identified 24,405 men with
lower-risk prostate cancers and complete data for the first course of
treatment. Initial curative therapy was undertaken in 13,537 of these
men (55%); 81% of treated men received radiation therapy. The likelihood
of curative therapy, relative to expectant management, varied
statistically significantly among lower-risk age-grade strata (all
P<.05). Assuming that initial expectant management is appropriate for
all lower-risk cancers, 2564 men (10%) in this population-based sample
were overtreated with radical prostatectomy and 10,973 (45%) with
radiation therapy. CONCLUSIONS: These data quantify a target population
for whom greater use of expectant approaches may reduce overtreatment
and improve the quality of localized prostate cancer care.

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As you can see, they identified a large number of 'low risk' cases
diagnosed between 2002 and 2006.  They don't give a definition in the
abstract of 'low risk'.   Also, since it is much to soon to know what
actually will happen to these men, they did not report observed data on
results.  (Keep in mind that for truly low risk prostate cancer
patients, the likelihood of dying of the disease within 5 years is
essentially zero.)  So they relied on some models of what might be
expected in such cases, and assuming also that expectant management was
an appropriate choice for all of them, tried to estimate the degree of
overtreatment.

As best I can see, this is all highly conjectural.  For older men today,
competent urologists don't by and large overtreat low risk cancers.  We
also know that some low risk younger men will never be troubled by their
cancers during their lifetimes, so there is definitely some degree of
overtreatment.   But the actual real data about this is murky.  It seems
to me that this study is trying to quantify that by analyzing existing
data, but without any new data, the results are bound to be open to
question.   But I would really like to look at the article to see just
what they say.

George,

I have the complete article.  What questions would you like answered?

The thing that struck me in the article is that they cited another
article which showed a significant drop in latent cases of prostate
cancer (PCa) discovered at autopsy since the introduction of PSA
testing.  The implication is that less people are dying with latent PCa
because they are receiving early localized treatment.  This would mean
that people who never would have died of PCa are going to show up as
being "cured" by early localized treatment.

The study itself looked at over 70,000 men and concluded that over
13,000 of them were potentially "overtreated".

Ed Friedman