Most men diagnosed with prostate cancer don’t die of the disease. Between 2011 and 2015, 112.6 per 100,000 men per year were diagnosed with prostate cancer in the U.S., but only 19.5 per 100,000 men per year died of the disease over that same period of time. That is still far too many deaths. But the huge disparity between deaths and diagnoses arises in large part from overdiagnosis of prostate cancer in elderly men, as a consequence of screening tests that find cancers that, if they had never been diagnosed, would not have progressed to life-threatening illnesses.
Fortunately, such overdiagnoses are beginning to decline, because physicians are backing off on screening older men for prostate cancer.
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