Prostate cancer screening ‘too late’ for Lincolnshire patient

National cancer screening programmes are already in place for breast, cervical and colon cancer. Prostate Cancer Research is calling for screening to be extended to prostate cancer.

The charity’s CEO, Oliver Kemp, said it was the second most common cancer in men, after lung cancer, and 50,000 men in the UK were diagnosed every year, with 12,000 dying with the disease.

He said the current screening system was “inefficient”, with only a third of men being given a Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test for the cancer the first time they asked.

He said: “It’s also unjust. We see huge difference in the numbers of people being diagnosed from lower socio-economic groups and you’re twice as likely to die of prostate cancer if you’re black than if you’re white.”

He claimed there was also a North-South divide in England, with patients in the North four times more likely than some in the South East to be diagnosed after the cancer had spread to another part of the body.