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What is prostate cancer?
The prostate gland is part of the male reproductive system. It is a firm gland, the size of a walnut, which wraps around the neck of the bladder and the urethra (the tube that delivers urine from the bladder). The prostate gland secretes much of the liquid portion of semen.
Prostate cancer is a disease in which cancer cells form and grow in the prostate gland. Prostate cancer can be aggressive, which means it grows quickly and spreads to other parts of the body. Or, more commonly, it may be slow growing and stay in the prostate, causing few if any problems. Three out of four cases of prostate cancer are of the slow-growing type.
A prostate cancer diagnosis is the leading cancer diagnosis and the second most common cause of cancer-related death in men in the United States. More than 100,000 cases are diagnosed yearly, and nearly 30,000 males die from prostate cancer each year. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer in U.S. men.
Since the early 1990s, new screening tests and improved prostate cancer treatments have been associated with dramatic shifts in the incidence, prostate cancer stage at diagnosis, and mortality of this disease. Major advances in research have provided new insights into prostate cancer. These developments promise to transform our understanding of this disease and will likely lead to new and better prostate cancer prevention, prostate cancer treatment and prostate cancer cure in the foreseeable future.
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