text_1: Are You At Risk? 5 Different Types of Prostate Cancer Found
text_2: This news release puts readers in a worried, defensive posture right from the get-go with its headline, “Are you at risk?” It concludes with a pitch for the services of robotic prostate cancer surgeon and urologic oncologist Dr. David Samadi of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. In between, it briefly recaps a study published in the EBioMedicine journal that apparently discovered “five different types of prostate cancer” (the study characterizes this finding, much more soberly, as “five separate patient subgroups with distinct genomic alterations and expression profiles”). The release suggests that genetic testing used in the study is better than current methods at forecasting prostate cancer progression; however, this apparent benefit is never quantified and key limitations of the study are never addressed. The tone is promotional, with links to a Fox news program featuring the surgeon quoted, a link to a “ProstateCancer911” website and the surgeon’s phone number for making an appointment for a consult. The study seems secondary at best. About 220,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in the United States annually, according to the American Cancer Society. The vast majority (98 percent) live at least 10 years after diagnosis and 94 percent are alive 15 years after diagnosis. If the cancer spreads to other parts of the body, the risk for death increases. This study highlights the possibility that men with high-risk gene profiles would be candidates for more aggressive follow-up treatment following removal of their prostates. The discussion also makes it clear that the value of these risk categories for clinical care remains to be determined. The news release would have done well to communicate that uncertainty more clearly.