Prostate cancer most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK

Data analysed by the Prostate Cancer UK charity has shown that the disease is now the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK.

Prostate cancer has now overtaken breast cancer to be the most commonly diagnosed form of the disease, with 57,192 new cases in 2018 – the most recent figures available. This comes just ahead of 57,153 breast cancer cases, 48,054 cases of lung cancer and 42,879 cases of bowel cancer.

Prostate Cancer UK claims that the announcement is a decade earlier than they imagined it would arrive, but said that this may be because increased awareness that has led to more men getting diagnosed.

This would certainly seem to be the case with data indicating that more prostate cancers are being caught at the locally advanced stage (stage III), when the disease is more treatable than if it has spread. More men are also being diagnosed at early stage I, when the cancer may never cause harm during their lifetime, and therefore close monitoring rather than aggressive treatment is recommended.

Analysis of the figures suggests new cases of prostate cancer have more than doubled over the last 20 years, while about 400,000 men in the UK are living with the disease or have survived it.

Angela Culhane, the chief executive of Prostate Cancer UK, said: “While it’s good news that more men have been having conversations with their GPs and being diagnosed earlier, it only serves to reinforce the need not only for better treatments which can cure the disease, but for better tests that can differentiate between aggressive prostate cancer that needs urgent treatment and those which are unlikely to ever cause any harm.

“We need research now more than ever, which is why it really is devastating that so much of it has been brought to a standstill by the Covid-19 crisis. Accelerating research to recover from this major setback will cost millions, but at the same time we’re predicting an unprecedented drop in our fundraising due to the impact of the pandemic.”