For most of your life, your prostate minds its own business and does its job-producing fluid for semen.[1] But as you get older, it can start to go off script in a serious way. Roughly one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.[2; 3] The average age of diagnosis: 66.[2]
“In 2020 alone, even before the arrival of COVID-19, the number of men expected to die from prostate cancer was estimated to hit a record high of any other year within the last two decades,”[4; 5] says Laurence H. Belkoff, D.O., a urologist and managing partner of the UCSEPA Division of MidLantic Urology in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.[5; 6; 7]
Numerous factors may be contributing to the increase. For starters, there’s no clear guidance on when to start screening. That’s a miss, Dr. Belkoff says, because “when caught early, prostate cancer has a 99 percent chance of survival.”[3; 5; 8] “This is three times higher than when prostate cancer is found in an advanced stage, which has only a 30 percent survival rate.”[5; 8]
MidLantic Urology's Dr. Laurence H. Belkoff lends his expertise in treating prostate cancer in a recent article from Let's Get Checked. Read the full article here.