Because prostate cancer is primarily a disease of older men, professionals' attitudes toward treating the elderly must be considered. Ageism is a cultural bias that can influence diagnostic vigor, treatment decisions, research, and public policy activity. Physicians' treatment decisions regarding care for elderly patients are likely to be influenced by a range of nonmedical factors, including age. The debate about whether men older than 70 years should be offered radical prostatectomy for clinically localized disease continues. Such criticism could either be medically justified or be interpreted as ageism.
Decisions based on age alone are clearly inappropriate.
Therefore, the onus is on the health care profession to design suitable programs that are tailored to the special needs of older men with prostate cancer. For men older than 60 years, coping with advanced prostate cancer is complicated by the concurrent problems they face. Older people may have to deal with reduced social support because of the death or relocation of their loved ones, social isolation, a host of co-morbid medical conditions, high medical expenses, fixed incomes, or all of these factors. Little research has been done using sex as a variable in adjustment to cancer. This makes the task of health care professionals more challenging with regard to normalizing the feelings of men who have prostate cancer and to reaching out to ensure that the men's needs have been adequately met.