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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Despite efforts to promote early screening, low-income men may be waiting too long for prostate cancer screening. New research shows low-income men are initially diagnosed with advanced stage prostate cancer at significantly higher rates than the general population.
With the widespread use of PSA screening, low-risk prostate cancer numbers have increased over the past 20 years. With treatment at an early stage, men diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer have an 85 percent chance of being cancer-free in five years. Unfortunately, beginning treatment at an advanced stage lowers a man's chance of beating the cancer to only 33 percent.
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Researchers report 19 percent of disadvantaged men from a Los Angeles outreach program had metastatic cancer at diagnosis, compared to 4 percent of men from the general population. What's more, rates of low-risk cancer diagnosis did not increase over time, in contrast to a significant increase among men from higher socioeconomic groups. Study authors say this indicates low-income men are not receiving prostate cancer screening services like men in the general population.
While much attention now focuses on potential overdiagnosis and overtreatment of men with screen detected prostate cancer, our findings serve as a reminder that for disadvantaged men, underdetection and undertreatment of prostate cancer remain significant concerns," David C. Miller, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Urology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, was quoted as saying.
SOURCE: To be published in The Journal of Urology, Feb. 2009
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