New study challenges popular belief about prostate cancer

Published: 05 July 2011

It’s a common misconception that most men affected by prostate cancer will die 'with' it but not 'of' it.

Not so, says research presented at the National Cancer Intelligence Network  conference in London in June.

Compared to the recent news about women with breast cancer who will die from causes other than the disease, almost half of men with prostate cancer who die will do so as a direct consequence of the disease, rather than from other causes.

Using Thames Cancer Registry data from the period between 1997 and 2007, researchers from King’s College London looked at the experience of 50,066 men with prostate cancer.

Of the 20,181 deaths during the 10 years, 49 per cent were recorded as being caused by the cancer itself. Just 12 per cent of deaths were caused by other cancers, 17 per cent were from heart disease, eight per cent were from pneumonia and 13 per cent were down to other causes.

After lung cancer, prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in UK men, affecting almost 40,000 each year.