AGE IS ALSO A MAJOR FACTOR OF GETTING PROSTATE CANCER
Age is also a major factor. Most—more than 80 percent of the men diagnosed with prostate cancer are older, over age 65; 90 percent of the deaths are in this same group. Traditionally, less than i percent of prostate cancer cases have been detected in men younger than age 50, and only 16 percent have been found in men between ages 50 and 64.
The average age of diagnosis of prostate cancer is 72; the average age of death from it is 77. What does this mean? Does it mean that if you’re a 52-year-old man you can breathe easy for the next twenty years? No, it doesn’t. It means that, historically, prostate cancer has been diagnosed in older men. It’s only recendy that techniques for spotting prostate cancer early have improved significantly.
Historically, most men found out they had prostate cancer when it was advanced, and they died a few years later. (This explains why the average age of death from prostate cancer is so near the average age of diagnosis.) There is every reason to believe that, over the next few years, the average age of diagnosis is going to drop by as much as a decade—as more men are diagnosed at a point when the disease is still confined to the prostate and still curable. And there’s every reason to hope that early diagnosis will reduce the number of men who die each year of the disease.
The incidence of prostate cancer increases with age more rapidly than the incidence of any other form of cancer. Epidemiologic studies show a forty-fold rise in the prevalence of prostate cancer from ages 50 to 85. With better medicine, diet and exercise, and less smoking, fewer older men are dying from other illnesses such as heart disease. So, as life expectancy increases, it’s likely that prostate cancer will develop in more and more men and, without early diagnosis and treatment, that more and more men will die from this disease.
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