Age alone doesn't make surgery for prostate cancer too risky, say researchers who found the treatment a safe option for otherwise healthy men up to age 79.

Having heart disease or other serious ailments in addition to the cancer proved a bigger predictor of surgical complications than increasing age, Canadian researchers report in today's edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

About 232,000 U.S. men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, and 30,000 will die, the American Cancer Society estimates.

Surgery often is recommended for younger men. If the tumor hasn't spread beyond the prostate, removing the walnut-sized gland offers the potential of a cure. But it can be a grueling operation and carries its own long-term risks: impotence and incontinence.

Older patients are less likely to undergo the surgery, called a radical prostatectomy. In one U.S. study, men under age 60 were 25 times as likely to have the surgery as those 70 or older. In Canada, fewer than 5 percent of patients in their 70s receive a prostatectomy.

To determine if the surgery was a safe option for older patients, scientists at Toronto's University Health Network tracked 11,000 men who received a prostatectomy during the 1990s in Ontario, Canada.

In the month after surgery, 53 men died. Age was associated with increasing mortality, but even among the 70- to 79-year-olds, fewer than 1 percent died from surgical complications.

About 20 percent of the men experienced one or more nonfatal surgical complications, such as heart or respiratory problems.

But having pre-existing health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, or obesity increased the risk of those complications, and of death, more than did age alone, the researchers concluded.

The study didn't examine long-term complications or whether prostatectomy is the best treatment option for men in their 70s. After all, prostate cancer usually is very slow growing.

"Many men, particularly men in their 70s, are going to have other health problems likely to take their life before prostate cancer will," cautions Dr. Durado Brooks, the American Cancer Society's prostate specialist.

But the study is important because it provides assurance that for the proper candidate–a man who isn't frail or in poor health–risks from the surgery itself are pretty low, Brooks says.

Find out more: Go to the U.S. News guide on prostate cancer to get in-depth information about symptoms, tests, treatment, and prevention.