Prostate cancer support group in Lincolnshire and the Humber urge men to take part if they're invited for new methods of screening
It comes as Prostate Cancer UK has today announced details of a new screening trial
Prostate Cancer UK has today announced details of a new screening trial which aims to find the best way to screen men for prostate cancer and double the number of lives saved.
Prostate cancer is currently the most common cancer in the UK without a screening programme, instead relying on men coming forward to their GP to request a test.
Now, the charity is raising awareness of TRANSFORM, the new trial that will test multiple methods of screening, and compare these against how men are tested now, to find the safest, most accurate way to screen men.
Previous trials using PSA and biopsy to screen for prostate cancer have shown that it is possible to prevent between 8% and 20% of prostate cancer deaths depending on how regularly men are screened.1 However, the new £42 million trial aims to refine the process and could more than double this impact and reduce prostate cancer deaths by up to 40%. With over 12,000 prostate cancer deaths in the UK alone this could mean thousands of men saved each year in the UK, and many thousands more worldwide.
'It immediately flashes through your mind... I'm coming up to my last Christmas."
Wolf Baker is the Chairman of the Lincolnshire and Humber Prostate Cancer Support Group. He was diagnosed and underwent treatment 9 years ago and tells us why it's important to test:
"When a consultant says 'I'm sorry you've got prostate cancer', it immediately flashes through your mind... I'm coming up to my last Christmas. That was 10 years ago since they told me and now I'd like to get to 100.
"Go and have a test, hopefully there's nothings wrong but if there is, and they catch it soon enough, you'll get treated and you can live. All I have now is 6 monthly blood checks and 12 monthly bladder checks, if that's a hindrance, I don't mind as long as it keeps me alive."
He also told us how the group works:
"Because we're in Lincolnshire and we're the only support group, we deal with Scunthorpe Hospital Trust, Lincoln, Grantham, down to Boston and if somebody is diagnosed and they want to talk, we just link them up."
To find out more about the group go to their website here.
TRANSFORM has been backed by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and Movember, who together committed £17.5million towards the trial.
Six of the world’s top prostate cancer researchers will lead the team taking on TRANSFORM, the biggest prostate cancer screening trial for 20 years, with hopes to see its first results in as little as three years.
The massive scale of the trial will enable the team to create a bio bank of samples, images and data at a scale never seen before in prostate cancer. This will be available to all kinds of cancer researchers and is predicted to spur a wave of new discoveries and provide a platform to prove the accuracy of the next generation of diagnostics.
One in eight men in the UK will get prostate cancer- on average more than 52,000 men are diagnosed every year, that’s 143 men every day.