September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, which takes on added significance in 2020. Not only has there been confusion in recent years about prostate cancer screening, but during the COVID pandemic, cancer screenings of all types have lagged while we mobilize to fight COVID. This at a time when UroToday.com cites the American Cancer Society that deaths nationally from prostate cancer will be at a record two-decade high this year.
Men should have a direct conversation with their primary care physician as to how best to assess your risk for prostate cancer, how best to screen for it and whether a base line of prostate-specific antigen levels (a simple blood test) would be helpful to determine the need for additional assessment. For me, PSA testing at the age of 52 led to a timely biopsy and successful treatments that made the difference between a cure and living with, or perhaps dying from, prostate cancer.
Have the discussion, and if your doctor does not raise it, you do it. Listen, ask questions and make the informed decision that you can live with. I am glad I did when I did. If I had waited, a cure would not have been an option.
Stay healthy.
Jim McGowan
Bath
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