Prostate Cancer

Description

Alternative Names

Prognosis

Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer in the US. Only lung cancer causes more cancer deaths in American men. The lifetime probability of developing prostate cancer is 8%. Each year, approximately 180,000 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and about 32,200 will die from the disease. It should be noted that because older men often die while suffering from both prostate cancer and other serious medical disorders, official records may attribute many deaths to prostate cancer that are actually due to other causes. Some researchers believe that deaths caused by prostate cancer are misreported (mostly overdiagnosed) by as much as 10% to 20%.

Treatment of prostate cancer varies depending on the stage of the cancer (i.e., spread) and may include surgical removal, radiation, chemotherapy, hormonal manipulation or a combination of these treatments.

Prognosis for Early Stage Disease

Because so many prostate tumors are low-grade and slow growing, survival rates are excellent when prostate cancer is detected in its early stages. Cure rates can be as high as 98% in some cases.

Click the icon to see an image of the pelvic lymph nodes.

Prognosis in Late Stage Disease

Locally Advanced. If the disease is at a stage known as locally advanced, in which it has spread beyond the prostate but only to nearby regions, it is more difficult to cure, but survival rates can be prolonged for years in many men. (When cancer has metastasized to the pelvic lymph nodes, the outlook is worse than if it spread to other areas.)

Metastasized Cancer. If prostate cancer has spread to distant organs (metastasized), average survival time is one to three years, but some of these patients may live longer or die of other causes.

Prognosis After Recurrence

If cancer recurs after initial treatment for early-stage tumors, it is still potentially curable if it is contained within the prostate, although in most cases the cancer has spread. Hormone treatments for such recurring cancers can often prolong survival for years, although the cancer almost always returns again.