Prostate Cancer

Question: I recently had a prostate biopsy, which showed a small area of cancer. My urologist discussed the option of close surveillance, with periodic biopsies and regular PSA blood testing. I'm 65 years old and otherwise in great health. Do you think it's better to treat the cancer or just watch it? Answer: In the case of early prostate cancer like you have, "active surveillance" is a reasonable approach. The downsides are the uncertainty of the disease course and the anxiety of living with prostate cancer.

Steve Lavin , who revived St. John's basketball in his first season with the Red Storm, has prostate cancer, but his doctor expects him to keep coaching and make a complete recovery. Lavin, 46, said in a statement yesterday he was diagnosed in September and was told he could delay treatment until after the season. He will begin treatment in the coming weeks. The statement did not say how he will treated. "My family feels fortunate that through annual health exams, we detected my condition at an early stage," Lavin said.

When Jim Ferree won the PGA Seniors Bell Atlantic Classic last May, just one month shy of his 60th birthday, he used words like "cherish" and "savor" to describe the victory, only the third of a professional career that has spanned five decades. "You never know if it'll be your last," Ferree said that day. "A lot of guys my age are dead. " George Lanning, a 58-year-old fellow Senior, had just died while convalescing from open-heart bypass surgery, and that clearly had an effect on Ferree.

Amid the many messages you will hear about screening for prostate cancer in the coming days, I hope these stand out: There is at best a small potential benefit from prostate cancer screening, and there are substantial known harms. We need a better test, and we need better treatment options. The panel I chair, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, has just issued a recommendation against screening men of any age for prostate cancer using the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, blood test.

Prostate cancer is especially tough on African Americans. They are about 50 percent more likely than white men to get the disease and twice as likely to die of it. The Prostate Cancer Foundation wants to help research institutions in Philadelphia take the lead in figuring out why, the foundation's founder and co-chair, Michael Milken, said Tuesday evening during the group's 10th annual fund-raiser in Philadelphia. Milken said he wonders, "What can we learn from this that would not only help them but will help all men on the planet?"

The disease that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is now fighting is as complex and confounding as it is common. Prostate cancer strikes one in six men, and is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer death among U.S. men. Last year, it was diagnosed in 190,000, and killed more than 30,000, the majority of them over age 65. The causes of prostate cancer remain unclear, although certain risk factors are known, including age, family...

Still tinglng with euphoria over the Bills' victory over Seattle on Sunday and their surprising 5-1 start this season, this city awoke to some shocking and sobering news: Head coach Marv Levy has prostate cancer and will undergo surgery today at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Breaking the news to his stunned team and then the media yesterday, Levy, 67, said that doctors have told him that the disease appears to be in the early stages, and that the prognosis for a complete recovery appears good.

American men are dying of prostate cancer, a disease that's curable in its early stages, simply because they are too embarrassed to talk about it or be examined for it. And all too often, physicians admit, doctors are part of the problem. One in 11 men will develop prostate cancer at some point during his lifetime. It is the third leading cause of cancer deaths in men. Black American men, for unknown reasons, experience the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world. And as the population ages, the incidence of prostate cancer will increase because it is a disease primarily of older men. Eighty percent of its victims are 65 or older.

CyberKnife radiosurgery - which uses narrow beams of radiation to kill several types of cancer - is marketed as a less invasive, more convenient way to treat prostate cancer, a pitch that has proved convincing for about 3,000 men over the last six years. But some prostate-cancer experts have reservations. Because prostate cancer grows slowly and because radiation side effects can emerge after many years, they say it is too soon to call the treatment a success. And those concerns have unleashed a battle over insurance payments that may soon leave thousands of men unable to afford this increasingly popular option.

Charles Brock has fought in the Korean War and survived auto accidents, but nothing scared him quite as much as learning he had cancer. "When you hear the big C word, that's absolutely devastating. . . . You have something growing inside you and you have no control over it," said Brock, 59. "Or you perceive you have no control over it. " In 1992, Brock was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He felt as though he couldn't talk to anyone who would understand what he was going through.