Prostate Cancer
8.52 In the South West as well as England as a whole, prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men and the second most common cause of cancer death. Despite this the progress of the disease and the best way of managing it clinically are not well understood.
8.53 The number of men diagnosed with prostate cancer per year increased abruptly with the widespread access to PSA testing in the late 1990’s. However the mortality due to prostate cancer has not changed significantly in the last decade. For men in their sixties, prostate cancer increasingly is treated with radical surgery. The number of operations performed has more than doubled between 1997/98 and 2004/05. This operation has serious and well known side effects, and only a modest chance of curing the cancer before the patient dies from unrelated causes. Recent research has shown that affluent men are more commonly diagnosed with prostate cancer although there is no evidence of an association with mortality. This indicates that affluent men may receive more testing for prostate cancer and also undergo more surgery. However this does not lead to a significantly reduced mortality.