Old Saying About Prostate Cancer Not True When It's Metastatic (80% die from it)

Nearly 80% of men with metastatic prostate cancer died from their malignancy, according to a retrospective cohort study.

The findings fill an information gap because, remarkably, "data are lacking" on causes of death among men whose prostate cancer has spread to other sites, say lead author Ahmed Elmehrath, MD.

"It was an important realization by our team that prostate cancer was the cause of death in 78% of patients," said senior author Omar Alhalabi, MD, of University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, in an email to Medscape Medical News.

The findings represent the near opposite of a commonly held — and comforting — belief about early-stage disease: "You die with prostate cancer, not from it."

That old saying is articulated in various ways, such as this from the Prostate Cancer Foundation: "We can confirm that there are those prostate cancers a man may die with and not of, while others are very aggressive." The American Cancer Society says this: "Prostate cancer can be a serious disease, but most men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not die from it."

However, these commonplace comments do not cover metastatic disease, which is what the authors of the new study decided to focus on.

The majority of these deaths (77.8%) were from prostate cancer, 5.5% were from other cancers, and 16.7% were from noncancer causes, including cardiovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cerebrovascular diseases.

Most of the prostate cancer deaths (59%) occurred within 2 years. The 5-year overall survival rate in the study group was 26%. The deadliness of metastatic disease "reinforces the need for innovations to promote early-stage diagnosis," comment the editorialists. Striking a hopeful note, they also say that "new tests for prostate cancer detection may reduce the proportion of patients who receive a diagnosis at a late stage."

Not sure how anyone on this forum can’t understand that. Gov’t is the problem NOT the solution. Advocating men give more money to gov’t so that the gov’t spends more of taxpayer money for men is just asinine.

From your original post here: Yet women get more money spent on breast cancer with tax payer money than men do for this type of cancer.

You really don't have much logic do you?

Men shell out billions a year for prostitution while next to nothing for their own causes and then complain about the war on men and a lack of funding, and you're talking to me about logic?

Also you are playing identity politics. That is something from the left. Another thing that doesn’t belong here. I used it to illustrate the absurdity of identity politics and why gov’t needs to be small and out of our lives.

I can accept that, but that still leaves the problem that men with plenty of disposable income choose to spend billions a year on prostitutes that could be donated to this research.

But you embrace it and attack men

Men shell out billions a year for prostitution in this country alone, and donate next to nothing for research into prostate cancer that could save their sons' lives. How can you point that out without "attack(ing) men"?

and advocate spending more money on causes to get gov’t to spend more money on things you think our righteous.

Then forget about waiting on the government to send tax dollars on prostate cancer research. Take some of that billions that men have to spend on prostitutes, and donate it to prostate cancer research. Problem solved.

You really don’t fit in here if that’s what you believe.

Thank you, oh master of Free Republic posting standards.

The most recent numbers I could find were in the billions, and that was from the last decade. I can't find that source now, but here's something.

9 Things You Didn't Know About American Prostitution

I don't put all men in one bucket, but if you aren't, then I would think you'd want the men in this bucket to think about what they could accomplish with that money they're throwing away on hookers.

But if you don't care then I don't care. If men want to invest in hookers instead of activism on men's issues, then let them. I'm tired of caring.

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