The American Cancer Society estimates that in the year 2017, 161,360 men will develop prostate cancer and 26,730 men will die from the disease, suggesting that Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. It is the third leading cause of death from cancer in men. Prostate cancer screening and more effective treatments have improved the 5 year survival rates, increasing from 66% in 1975 to 99% in 2005. Despite such dramatic improvements, PSA screening has remained controversial.
There have been legitimate concerns about false positive PSA’s prompting unnecessary prostate biopsies, the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of men who were not going to die from their disease, and the main complications associated with prostate cancer treatment — Erectile Dysfunction and Urinary Incontinence (leakage). Despite these concerns, most urologists are in favor of screening, and they are using “Active Surveillance” (AS) for low-risk patients in order to offset the risk of overtreatment; however, they are generally failing to properly address the complications of Erectile Dysfunction (ED) and Urinary Incontinence (UI).
