In 1997, there will be approximately 300,000 new cases of diagnosed prostate cancer and 44,000 deaths from prostate cancer. Numbers that will continue to rise as the population ages. Ninety-five percent of prostate cancers are diagnosed in men between the age of 45 and 89. This places prostate cancer as the second leading cause of cancer death in men after lung cancer and is the second leading cancer among men behind skin cancer.
Prostate cancer shortens life expectancy dramatically.
This is why therapies directed toward the cure of prostate cancer have been so aggressively sought. In patients generally less than 70 to 75 years old with prostate cancer that is felt to be confined to the prostate gland, the most effective cure has been considered to be radical prostatectomy. This therapy has been met with mixed approval from the patient population, secondary to the complications, which in the past occurred at a much more frequent basis. Recently, significant improvements have occurred in the surgical technique for removal of the prostate. With these improvements, the complications of incontinence and impotence have dropped dramatically.