Rise in reported cases of prostate cancer

Research reveals that more than 40,000 British males are now diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, a dramatic increase from 1989's figure of 14,000.

Healthcare experts believe the rise in the number of cases is largely down to an increasing amount of men being tested for the cancer's biomarker Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) by way of a blood test.

According to Cancer Research UK the yearly death rate associated with the disease has continued at a regular pace - an estimated 10,000 every year.

'Accurately diagnosing and predicting the need for treatment of prostate cancer is fraught with difficulties and there is no escaping the fact that we need a better tool than PSA to help detect prostate cancers that actually need treating,' said Professor Malcolm Mason, prostate cancer expert at the charity.

'We urgently need to find better tests that tell us more about a man's prostate cancer. Is the disease going to sit quietly in the background and never cause a problem or do we need to treat it aggressively?

'If we can accurately answer these questions, we could spare thousands of men unnecessary treatment that can lead to side effects like impotence and incontinence,' he said.

Copyright Press Association 2012