22-05-2025
Biden's cancer diagnosis sheds light on screening
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — There has been a lot of discussion around men's health after former President Joe Biden announced he had been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer.
The last time doctors screened him was in 2014. Dr. Peter Van Veldhuizen, an oncologist from the University of Michigan Health West, says this should be done more regularly.
Biden's last prostate cancer screening was in 2014, his office confirms
'Prostate cancer screening is mainly using the PSA (prostate-specific antigen). There's actually been a lot of controversy around the PSA because you can detect. It's not perfect in detecting it, and sometimes it's elevated in patients that don't have cancer, so it's kind of waning in and out as far as a screening tool. But most of us feel now that you should be screened once yearly with a PSA,' he said.
As a person ages, cancer may have a 'long natural history,' and screenings tend to stop as a person gets older, Van Veldhuizen explained.
'I think in (Biden's) case, they used the age cutoff of 70, or the other one often used is life-expectancy of 10 years or more,' he said.
Biden's sudden diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer is unfortunately all too common
Prostate cancers are graded based on aggressiveness using a Gleason score, ranging from 0 to 10, with 10 being the most aggressive. Biden's office said his score was 9.
'Prostate cancer does have a large percentage of people that have less aggressive disease… in fact, if it's 6 or less, we often don't treat it,' Van Veldhuizen said.
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