Is prostate cancer deadly?

A small proportion of men with prostate cancer have more aggressive disease that spreads and eventually causes death. About 35,000 to 40,000 men die annually from prostate cancer, but this amounts to only about 3% to 4% of all deaths in men. When you consider that two-thirds or more of men who live a normal life span have some cancerous cells in their prostates, it really is only a small percentage who dies from it. Most prostate cancers grow very slowly over many years, so most men die from other causes before their prostate cancer kills them. But the key point that underlies all prostate cancer screening and treatment decisions is that the natural progression of prostate cancer is simply not understood well enough to allow doctors to tell which cases are likely to progress to death and which will never cause any problems.

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