PROSTATE CANCER EPIDEMIC

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in the United States and the second most lethal cancer in men.

• Two million American men are currently living with prostate cancer.
• Since 1986, incidence of prostate cancer had risen dramatically in younger men⁸, including:
• Seven fold increase in men aged 50 and younger;
• Three fold increase in men aged 50 to 59.
• Prostate cancer is more common than breast cancer.
• Prostate cancer strikes 1 in 6 men.
• Breast cancer strikes 1 in 8 women.
• A man is diagnosed with prostate cancer every 2.5 minutes.
• A man dies every 19 minutes, even though prostate cancer can be cured when detected early.

• National investment in prostate cancer research lags behind that of breast cancer.
  ► NCI Funding ► DOD Funding
• As a direct result of low funding, men do not have accurate diagnostic tools akin to life-saving mammograms.^{1, 2}
• Emerging scientific evidence questions if the current screening tools, such as Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) and Digital Rectal Exam (DRE), save lives and highlights their widespread harm due to overdiagnosis and overtreatment (see below for Current Prostate Diagnostics: Facts).^1,4
• Unreliable diagnostic tools result in blind patient care and the prostate cancer crisis.

PROSTATE CANCER CRISIS:
DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF UNRELIABLE DIAGNOSTICS AND BLIND PATIENT CARE

The lack of reliable diagnostic tools, including imaging technologies, causes prostate cancer to become both a patient care crisis and socio-economic problem.

• Underdiagnosis leads to:
  
• Missed and/or under-estimated cancer and lost lives; ³
• Treatment failures and progression of cancer in as many as 1 in 2 men.⁵


• Overdiagnosis causes:
  
• Unnecessary biopsies in as many as 88% of men, or over 1 million each year at a cost of
  $2 billion annually to national health care;²
• Unnecessary treatment in as many as 54% of men with early disease.⁴
  
  
• Human and societal impact is dire:
• Millions of men experience reduced quality of life due to treatment complications, such as incontinence and impotence;⁶
• Billions of dollars are added to health care costs.⁷

• PSA causes false reassurances and false alarms:²
• When PSA is normal, 15% of men still have cancer.
• When PSA is abnormal, 25-35% of men have prostate cancer and 65-75% of men undergo unnecessary biopsies.


• Biopsies are blind and random:
• Miss at least 20% of cancer;³
• Underestimate the spread, or stage of cancer in at least 20-30% of men;³
• In many men, current diagnostics are insufficient to distinguish aggressive prostate cancer, which requires treatment, from the non-aggressive disease, which only requires careful monitoring.^{3, 4}

¹ Andriole GL, et al. New England Journal of Medicine 2009; 360(13): 1310-1319.
² www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/detection/plco-prostate
³ Robert KA, et al. Journal of Urology 2002; 167(6): 2435-2439.
⁴ Miller DC, et al. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2006; 98: 1134-1141.
⁵ AdMeTech’s Public Conference, September 2007.
⁶ Stanford JL, et al. Journal of the American Medical Association, January 19, 2000.
⁷ Admetech’s Brain Trust, April 2007.
⁸ H.Gilbert Welch, Peter C. Albertsen. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2009; 101(19): 1325-1329.