Prostate cancer ‘kills more men than believed’

But now experts have discovered that almost half (49 per cent) of men with the disease actually die from their cancer.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men after lung cancer.

It usually affects older men and can be a slow-growing disease.

Prostate cancer accounts for about 37,000 new cases in the UK each year and more than 10,000 men die from it annually.

Experts at King’s College London examined records for 50,066 men with prostate cancer between 1997 and 2007.

Just under half of this group (20,181 men) died during the 10-year period. Of these, 49 per cent were recorded as being due to the cancer itself.

Some 12 per cent of deaths were due to other cancers, 17 per cent to heart disease, 8 per cent from pneumonia and 13 per cent from other causes.

The findings were presented at a cancer conference in London.

One of the authors, Professor Henrik Moller, head of analysis and research at NCIN, said: “Our data show that a high proportion of men with prostate cancer die from the cancer. Our findings challenge the commonly-held view that most men with prostate cancer will die with the disease rather than from it.”

Simon Chowdhury, author on the study and consultant oncologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London, said: “This confirms that prostate cancer is a major cause of morbidity and mortality for a large number of men and the importance of ongoing and future research into this area.”

Professor Malcolm Mason, Cancer Research UK’s prostate cancer expert, said: “This is an extremely important study, which highlights that prostate cancer is not a trivial disease for large numbers of men in the UK who suffer from it.

“It is important for specialists, and for healthcare planners, to realise that, particularly for men with advanced prostate cancer, their disease poses a significant threat to their health and their life, and the old notion that ‘most men die with it, not of it’ is simply not true for men with advanced disease.”

Prof Mason said the good news was that many more men are now diagnosed at an earlier stage.

Not all of the men in this study who died of prostate cancer would die of it today.

Professor Jane Maher, chief medical officer at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “This puts paid to the commonly held view that most men don’t die from the disease – they die with it.

“However it does also mean that still more than half of men with prostate cancer will not die from it. It is vital therefore that everyone diagnosed with the disease gets the information and support to make the choice that’s right for them about their treatment and monitoring.”