For many years it was thought that chemotherapy was ineffective for prostate cancer. With more recent drugs, prostate cancer can now be effectively treated with chemotherapy. Unfortunately though, chemotherapy is not a curative form of treatment at the moment. Chemotherapy can often achieve useful “palliation” of symptoms caused by prostate cancer and is often well tolerated without many side effects. The most recent studies have shown that, in addition to making life for men with advanced cancer more comfortable, chemotherapy can prolong survival in some of these men. Chemotherapy is almost exclusively used for patients with advanced disease, and most commonly, after hormone treatments have been used.