Prostate cancer is one of those diagnoses which instills fear into mankind. Women, not having a prostate, can stop reading, but mind you, they do have their own unique cancer problems with cancer of the womb.
I was stimulated to write about prostate cancer, following an article in the journals on prostate cancer and survival rates.
It was reported as where prostate cancer spreads in the body has a direct effect on survival, research has shown.
Scientists have been able to map typical survival times to specific organ sites.
The study found that patients whose tumors had only spread to the lymph nodes had a best prognosis of 32 months.
Those whose cancer had reached the liver had a life expectancy of two years.
Spread to the bones was associated with a survival time of 21 months and to the lungs of 19 months.
The research was based on data from nine large Phase III clinical trials involving 8736 men with advanced prostate cancer. All had undergone standard treatment with the chemotherapy drug docetaxel.
Professor Susan Halabi, from Duke University, in the US, said, “Smaller studies had given doctors and patients indications that the site of metastasis in prostate cancer affects survival, but prevalence rates in organ sites were small, so it was difficult to provide good guidance.”
The phrase ‘reinventing the wheel’ came immediately to my mind. So, the further the cancer cells went in the body, the less time you have left on this earth. This has been noted for years. This is nothing new.
“With the large numbers we analyzed in our study, we were able to compare all of these different sites and provide information that could be helpful in conveying prognosis to patients. This information could also be used to help guide treatment approaches using either hormonal therapy or chemotherapy.”
Nearly 73 percent had experienced metastasis, or spread, to the bones. Men with lymph involvement only made up the smallest group, accounting for just 6.4 percent of the total.
Patients with liver metastasis represented 8.6 percent, while those with lung disease made up 9.1 percent.
“These results should help guide clinical decision-making for men with advanced prostate cancer,” said Prof Halabi.
(The findings are published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Originally published as Prostate life expectancy depends on spread.)
Now let’s look at these frightening statistics again. The figures that were quoted came from men who already had advanced prostate cancer, not all men. Other statistics show that prostate cancer is a disease of aging, and we are all living longer. The statistics show that by age 50, almost 50 percent of American men will have microscopic signs of prostate cancer. By age 75, almost 75 percent of men will have some cancerous changes in their prostate glands. Do the math. By 100 we’ve all got it!
So does this mean that life really ends at around 76? Fortunately no. Most of these cancers stay within the prostate, producing no signs or symptoms, or are so slow-growing, that they never become a serious threat to health. The good news is you die of something else before the prostate gets you! You die with it, rather than from it.
The real situation is that a much smaller number of men will actually be treated for prostate cancer. About 16 percent of American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lives; 8 percent will develop significant symptoms; but only 3 percent will die of the disease. Put another much more positive way, 97 percent won’t die from prostate cancer.
The researchers were dealing with the three percent group. It is then no wonder that the numbers looked bad.
While prostate cancer can be ‘aggressive’, breaking out from the prostate gland itself and attacking other tissues, including brain and bone, fortunately this is the minority scenario. The great majority of prostate cancers are slow growing, and it can be decades between the early diagnosis and the cancer growing large enough to produce symptoms.
So let’s get the “blood test” out of the way. The blood test is called Prostate Specific Antigen, or PSA, and the actual number isn’t as important as the rate of change.
