Early detection of prostate cancer. Decreasing the mortality rate

In conclusion, prostate cancer is a major menace to Western society. Since prostate cancer is asymptomatic in the early stages and no curative therapy exists for the advanced stages, our only hope for decreasing the mortality rate from prostate cancer is through early detection programs. Young men with life expectancies of 15 years or more should participate in early detection efforts. These men should be evaluated diligently, through the combined use of DRE and the newly described age-specific reference ranges. Radical prostatectomy, when performed on a man with a life expectancy of 30 to 35 years who has organ-confined prostate cancer, is an effective treatment for the No. 1 cancer in men today. With limited health care dollars available in the future for the diagnosis and management of prostate cancer, physicians will be forced to become selective with their diagnostic and therapeutic efforts. It is much less expensive to treat a young man with early-stage, curable prostate cancer than to manage an elderly man terminally ill from advanced prostate cancer. Without question, young men will be the target of our early detection efforts and the ones who will benefit.