Survival of Danish cancer patients 1943-1987. Male genital organs

This chapter describes the survival of men with the two commonest cancers of the genital organs--cancer of the prostate and cancer of the testis. Prostatic cancer is largely a disease of old age and occurs at a rate of about 1400 new cases per year in Denmark. Testicular cancer is a rare disease, usually affecting men in their 20s and 30s. About 250 new cases occur annually in Denmark. Both prostatic and testicular cancer have been increasing in incidence over the period of cancer registration in Denmark. Relative survival of prostatic cancer patients improved over the period of study, with an increase in one-year survival from 52% around 1945 to 80% around 1985. The corresponding change in five-year survival was from 22 to 39%. The survival of testicular cancer patients increased in response to improvements in therapy: relative one-year survival increased from 70% around 1945 to 95% around 1985. The increase was particularly strong for non-seminomas, for which one-year survival increased from 53 to 94%. Excess mortality after a diagnosis of testicular cancer was most pronounced in the first few years after diagnosis; for prostatic cancer, mortality relative to that of the general population was about two fold, even 10 years after diagnosis.