Other Factors That Impact Survival Rate
While SEER staging is important to predicting cancer-related outcomes, its not the only thing that predicts prostate cancer survival rates.
A mans age and overall health also play a role in how well they will tolerate and recover from treatment.
Another factor that is not considered when calculating a relative survival rate is the type of prostate cancer cells. Prostate cancers are divided into certain grades based on how aggressive the cancer cells are. This grade, or score, is called a Gleason score and is determined after a prostate tissue biopsy has been performed.
The Gleason score consists of two scores, or grades, from two different areas of the prostate, typically areas that have the most cancer cells involved. The grades fall on a scale from 1-5, with 1 meaning the cells look like normal prostate cells and 5 meaning the cells look very abnormal.
Once a grade has been made for each of the two biopsy areas, they are added together for the final score that ranges between 2-10.
Prostate cancers are considered aggressive if theyre a Gleason 7 or higher.
For example, lets say a man has a prostate biopsy of two areas. One area has fairly normal-looking cells, and a pathologist determines it has a score of 2. The second area has slightly more abnormal cells and falls into a score of 4. The total Gleason score would 6 . Since it is less than 7, the prostate cancer wouldnt be considered aggressive.
Which Age Groups Have The Highest Incidence Of Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer incidence increases as men age as many as 60% of men over 65 years of age may be diagnosed with prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is most often diagnosed in men aged 65-74 years median age at diagnosis is 66 years.
However, men as young as 17 years are experiencing an increasing incidence of prostate cancer in much of the world, including the United States, according to data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Global Burden of Disease database. These younger patients frequently present with more advanced cancer and have worse survival than middle-aged and older men. Worldwide, the incidence of prostate cancer has increased in men ages 15 to 40 years at a steady rate averaging 2% per year since 1990. In the United States, this age group was more than 6 times more likely than older men to have distant disease at diagnosis.
References
Bray F, Ferlay J, Soerjomataram I, Siegel RL, Torre LA, Jemal A. Global cancer statistics 2018: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries. CA Cancer J Clin. 2018 Nov. 68 :394-424. .
American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts & Figures 2021. Available at . Accessed: February 2, 2021.
Komyakov BK, Sergeev AV, Fadeev VA, et al. . Urologiia. 2017 Sep. 42-5. .
The Numbers About Age
The average age of a patient diagnosed with cancer is 66, and a quarter of all new cancer cases are diagnosed in people between 65 and 74 years old, according to the National Cancer Institute . Some cancers are more common in young people. For instance:
- Nearly 60 percent of patients diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia are younger than 20. The average age at diagnosis is 15.
- Nearly 79 percent of men diagnosed with testicular cancer are younger than 45. The average age of a patient at diagnosis is 33.
But patients who havent turned 20 years old account for only 1 percent of all new cancer cases and an even smaller fraction of cancer deaths.
Usually, cancers are diagnosed in much older adults, the NCI reports. For instance, this is the average age for each of these cancers:
- Breast cancer: 61
While researchers have theories about what may be contributing to cancers prevalence in older age groups, conclusive scientific evidence is still lacking. There is a clear link between age and the likelihood of cancer, but the reasons and cellular mechanisms for this striking correlation are unknown,Tom Misteli, PhD, director of the NCIs Center for Cancer Research, said in a 2019 Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation release.
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How Prostate Cancer Is Diagnosed And Staged
Cancer staging helps you and your doctor understand how advanced your cancer is and how much it has spread at the time of diagnosis. Knowing your cancer stage also helps your doctor determine the best treatment options for you and estimate your chance of survival.
The most widely used staging system for cancer is the TNM system that classifies cancer from stage 1 to stage 4.
TNM stands for:
- Tumor: the size and extent of the tumor
- Nodes: the number or extent of nearby lymph node involvement
- Metastasis: whether cancer has spread to distant sites in the body
The TNM scale is used for many types of cancer. When a doctor uses it to determine your prostate cancer stage, theyll consider several other factors as well, including:
How To Help Lower Your Risk
Although no one can turn back the hands of time and become younger, there are other ways that you can cut your risk of developing deadly colorectal cancer. Many of these include lifestyle changes, such as modifying your diet, weight, and level of physical activity.
However, the best way to prevent full-blown colorectal cancer is early detection. If youâre more than 45 years old and have yet to receive a colonoscopy or other screening test, itâs imperative that you make an appointment with your physician and get screened.
Siegel RL, Miller KD, Goding Sauer A, et al. Colorectal cancer statistics, 2020. CA A Cancer J Clin. 2020 70:145-164. doi:10.3322/caac.21601
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Stage 2 Prostate Cancer
In stage 2, the tumor is still confined to your prostate and hasnt spread to lymph nodes or other parts of your body. A doctor may or may not be able to feel the tumor during a prostate exam, and it may appear on ultrasound imaging. The survival rate is still .
The PSA score for stage 2 is less than 20 ng/mL.
Stage 2 cancer is further divided into three phases depending on the grade group and Gleason scores:
- Gleason score: 6 or less
Early Mortality And Year Of Diagnosis
For year-specific survival analyses, we used Cox regression models estimating the average of the hazard ratio during the time of 24-months for the years of diagnosis between 2005 and 2013 according to the time of diagnosis. Models were adjusted for age, age squared, grading differentiation between a Gleason score below and above 6, and risk , respectively, allowing for the interaction between year of diagnosis and each main effect covariate, and thus for a temporal variation of potential confounders.
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Request An Appointment At Moffitt Cancer Center
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Surgically Removing The Prostate Gland
A radical prostatectomy is the surgical removal of your prostate gland. This treatment is an option for curing prostate cancer that has not spread beyond the prostate or has not spread very far.
Like any operation, this surgery carries some risks, such as urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction.
In extremely rare cases, problems arising after surgery can be fatal.
Its possible that prostate cancer can come back again after treatment. Your doctor should be able to explain the risk of your cancer coming back after treatment, based on things like your PSA level and the stage of your cancer.
Studies have shown that radiotherapy after prostate removal surgery may increase the chances of a cure, although research is still being carried out into when it should be used after surgery.
You may want to ask your doctors about storing a sperm sample before the operation so it can be used later for in vitro fertilisation .
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Questions To Ask Your Doctor Or Nurse
- What type of hormone therapy are you offering me and why?
- Are there other treatments I can have?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of my treatment?
- What treatments and support are available to help manage side effects?
- Are there any lifestyle changes that might help me manage my cancer, symptoms, or side effects?
- How often will I have check-ups and what will this involve?
- How will we know if my cancer starts to grow again?
- What other treatments are available if that happens?
- Can I join any clinical trials?
- If I have any questions or get any new symptoms, who should I contact?
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To Treat Or Not To Treat
Up until now, with a few notable exceptions, doctors have myopically focused on treating prostate cancer, says Adami. They are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on chemotherapy that has minimal effects on cancer mortality, often with substantial side effects. But we ignore entirely the fact that large groups of prostate cancer patients die from other causes that actually are preventable.
Among older patients especially, that activity can take the form of vigorous walking. Recently, Mucci has spearheaded an intervention with Adami and other colleagues in Sweden, Iceland, and Ireland in which men walk in groups with a nurse three times a week. In a pilot study, researchers found improvements in just 12 weeks in body weight, blood pressure, sleep, urinary function, and mental health.
Scientists at HSPH are also searching for genetic and lifestyle markers that help predict how aggressive a patients prostate cancer will be. For example, an ongoing project led by Mucci and Adami draws on detailed cancer registries in Nordic countries, including an analysis of 300,000 twins, to tease out the relative contribution of different genes to prostate cancer incidence and survival.
is a Boston-based journalist and author of The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the Worlds Favorite Soft Drink.
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Metastatic Prostate Cancer Prognosis
Prostate cancer prognosis varies from person to person, as every situation is different. Five-year relative survival rates are categorized by the type of cancer: localized, regional and distant.
According to the American Cancer Society, localized cancer has a five-year relative survival rate of more than 99 percent. For regional cancer , the five-year relative survival rate is also more than 99 percent.
For distant cancer , the five-year relative survival rate drops to 31 percent.
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Survival Statistics For Prostate Cancer
Survival statistics for prostate cancer are very general estimates and must be interpreted very carefully. Because these statistics are based on the experience of groups of people, they cannot be used to predict a particular person’s chances of survival. In general, most men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not die from the disease itself and will die from other causes.
There are many different ways to measure and report cancer survival statistics. Your doctor can explain the statistics for prostate cancer and what they mean to you.
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Who Is At Risk
Some men are at a higher risk of getting prostate cancer than others. Generally, the chances increase with age, particularly after age 50. This is why you should start being screened once you hit age 50.
Other risk factors for the disease include:
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Race: African American men are twice as likely to get prostate cancer as white men. Several studies reveal that the number of new Black men diagnosed is nearly 80% higher than those diagnosed in white men.
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Family history of prostate cancer: If you have a family member, either a brother or a father, diagnosed with prostate cancer, especially at a relatively early age, you are at a higher risk of developing one.
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Family history of breast and ovarian cancer: A family history of breast and ovarian cancer is associated with an inherited BRCA gene mutation that could trigger prostate cancer.
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Diet: A high-fat diet and obesity increase your chances of developing the disease.
Staging Spread And Survival Rates
As with all cancers, doctors use the term stage to describe the characteristics of the primary tumor itself, such as its size and how far prostate cancer has spread when it is found.
Staging systems are complicated. The staging system for most cancers, including prostate cancer, uses three different aspects of tumor growth and spread. It’s called the TNM system, for tumor, nodes, and metastasis:
- T, for tumor describes the size of the main area of prostate cancer.
- N, for nodes, describes whether prostate cancer has spread to any lymph nodes, and how many and in what locations.
- M, for metastasis, means distant spread of prostate cancer, for example, to the bones or liver.
Using the TNM system, each man’s prostate cancer can be described in detail and compared to other men’s prostate cancer. Doctors use this information for studies and to decide on treatments.
As far as survival rates for prostate cancer go, however, the staging system is pretty simple. As we’ve mentioned, in terms of survival rates, men with prostate cancer can be divided into two groups:
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The Stages Of Prostate Cancer: What You Need To Know
After a prostate cancer diagnosis, your oncologist will refer to the stage of your cancer. All cancers are categorized into four distinct stages, each of which identifies the progress of the growth of cancerous cells within clinically defined standards. These stages help doctors determine the most appropriate care for each patient based on his or her condition, and can also provide easy-to-understand context for your diagnosis. Learn more about the stages of prostate cancer, how each stage will affect your treatment plan and the survival rates for each stage, then contact Regional Cancer Care Associates to schedule a consultation.
What Are The Side Effects Of External Beam Radiation Therapy
As with most prostate cancer treatments, external beam radiation therapy can also cause side effects. The severity can depend on the type of radiation, dose size, length of treatment and area of treatments. These frequently include:
- Skin irritation
- Erectile dysfunction
- Secondary malignancy
If you are considering prostate cancer treatment with a form of EBRT, talk with your radiation oncologist to discuss options, potential side effects, and how those side effects will be managed.
Recently, the FDA approved the use of Space OAR, a hydrogel product for men choosing radiation therapy that can reduce the radiation received by the rectum during treatment. This can help decrease the chances of developing rectal complications such as the inability to control your bowels. The hydrogel is injected between the prostate and rectum where the gel solidifies and creates a space before radiation begins. To learn more about this product, visit the manufacturers site here.
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Hope For Advanced Cancer
Your doctor will continue to monitor your PSA levels and may perform other tests after treatment for prostate cancer. If it recurs or spreads to other parts of the body, additional treatment may be recommended. Lifestyle choices may matter, too. One study found that prostate cancer survivors who exercised regularly had a lower risk of dying, for example.
Prostate Cancer Epidemiology In Canada
In Canada, incidence of prostate cancer in men 50 to 59 years of age has increased by 50% in last ten years due to PSA testing.Incidence of loco-regional disease has increased, whereas the incidence of metastatic disease has decreased among Canadian population.
If we compare the incidence of prostate cancer in Canada with other countries then there is significant increase in prostate cancer incidence in Canada due to PSA testing.Countries having high risk of prostate cancer includes United states, Canada, Sweden and Australia and low risk countries include Indonesia, Korea and Germany.
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Taking Charge: Who Gets Breast Cancer
There are no rules about who gets this disease. The two most significant risk factors are being a woman, and increasing age. However, there are other factors that may increase your risk, and some that may lower it.
The development of breast cancer may be influenced by factors that affect the levels of female hormones that circulate in your body throughout life. These factors include the age when you began your menstrual period, the number of times you have been pregnant, your age at first pregnancy, whether you have breastfed your children, and your level of physical activity.
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There Are 2 Types Of Staging For Prostate Cancer:
The Clinical Stage The clinical stage is based on the results of tests that can be done prior to the surgery. They include the DRE, biopsy, X-rays, CT and/or MRI scans and bone scans. X-rays, bone scans, CT scans and MRI scans may not always be needed. They are recommended based on the PSA level, the size of the cancer, which is determined by its grade and volume and the clinical stage of the cancer.
The Pathologic Stage The pathologic stage is based on information found during surgery, plus the laboratory results referred to as pathology, of the prostate tissue removed during surgery. The surgery often includes the removal of the entire prostate and some lymph nodes.One important part of the staging process is determining the grade of the cancer. The grading system is based on the microanalysis of the prostatic tissue. While the stage of the cancer is determined based on the macro appearance of the tumor, in connection with the nearby organs and tissues, the grade of cancer is usually determined after a biopsy, when the cells are analyzed under a microscope.
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