For newly diagnosed prostate disease patients and cancer survivors, a newly formed group meeting at the University of Maryland Medical Center will offer both support and a means of making better-informed decisions about treatment options. A topic of great interest is the duration and side effects of various treatment options as well as individual experiences.
Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in American men.
This year, nearly 180,000 American men will learn they have prostate cancer and 37,000 will die of this disease. By age 50, one-third of all American men have microscopic signs of the disease and by age 75, up to 75 percent of men have cancerous changes in their prostate. Most of these cancers remain latent, producing no signs or symptoms, or they are so slow growing that they never become a serious threat to a man s health. African-American men, in fact, have the world s highest incidence of prostate cancer, a third higher than white Americans. The risk is more than 10 times higher for a man who has three close relatives with the disease.