Men who have undergone surgery for prostate cancer are much more likely to experience a recurrence of the disease if they smoke, a new study has found.

The risk is also increased if they quit smoking within the last 10 years.

Every year in Ireland, over 2,000 men are newly diagnosed with prostate cancer, while 500 die as a result of the disease. In Europe, it is responsible for around 92,000 deaths annually.

Among men who undergo a radical prostatectomy - the removal of the prostate gland and some of the tissue around it - almost one-third see the cancer return within 10 years.

European and US scientists decided to investigate this further among almost 7,200 men who had undergone this type of treatment. Among the participants, just over one-third had never smoked, while almost one-third were former smokers. The remaining third were current smokers.

The men were monitored for an average of two years and four months.

The study found that after this time period, current smokers were twice as likely to experience a recurrence of the disease compared to those who had never smoked.

Those who had given up smoking within the last 10 years displayed a similar risk of recurrence as the current smokers. This risk of recurrence only started to fall significantly when the person was more than 10 years off cigarettes.

"This is a new analysis, but it seems to confirm results we have seen in many other types of cancer. Basically, smoking increases the risk of cancer recurrence after initial treatment," commented lead researcher, Dr Malte Rieken, of the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland.

He noted that prostate cancer mortality rates vary widely throughout Europe and ‘the fact that cancer recurrence can vary so dramatically due to smoking is probably one of the factors which may contribute to differences in prostate cancer mortality'.

"It's just another reason not to smoke at all, but the fact that the risk drops after 10 years means that anyone who has prostate cancer would be well advised to quit immediately," Dr Rieken added.

Details of these findings were presented at the European Association of Urology conference in Madrid.