One Man Shoot

cancer this year
• In Louisiana, approximately 2,950 men will learn they have prostate cancer this year and 360 will die of this disease.
• Prostate cancer occurs mainly in older men. About 6 cases in 10 are diagnosed in men aged 65 or older, and it is rare before age 40. The average age at the time of diagnosis is about 66.
• Prostate cancer occurs more often in African-American men and Caribbean men of African ancestry than in men of other races. African-American men are also more likely to be diagnosed at an advanced stage, and are more than twice as likely to die of prostate cancer as Caucasian men. Prostate cancer occurs less often in Asian-American and Hispanic/Latino men than in nonHispanic whites. The reasons for these racial
and ethnic differences are not clear.
• Having a father or brother with prostate cancer more than doubles a man’s risk of developing this disease. (The risk is higher for men who have a brother with the disease than for those with an affected father.) The risk is much higher for men with several affected relatives, particularly if their relatives were young at the time the cancer was found. Statistics courtesy of American Cancer Society, www.cancer.org