A new paper in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute indicates that patients may benefit if doctors stop calling certain early-stage changes to the prostate "cancer" at all. The paper is titled "When is prostate cancer really cancer?" . Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death worldwide in men, but far more patients are diagnosed than die of the disease.
In 2022, there were nearly 1.5 million cases of prostate cancer, but only 400,000 deaths. Low-grade prostate cancer, commonly known as GG1 among physicians, virtually never metastasizes or causes symptoms.
Some medical researchers have wondered recently if it would be a benefit to public health to call GG1 something other than cancer. To further this discussion, researchers convened an international symposium with participants from multiple fields, including patient advocacy. Key considerations included the very high rate of GG1 detectable on autopsy studies, the focus of contemporary diagnostic tests on detecting higher grade cancers, the benefits of relegating GG1 to something more like "incidentaloma" status, the adverse health effects of overtreatment, and the psychological burden of a cancer diagnosis for patients.
Those who convened at the meeting emphasized that while GG1 is common among older men, it should not be considered normal. Patients with this condition should continue to monitor it with their physicians, according to investigators. One concern is that patients may not bother to monit.