This document summarizes statistics on prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates in the United States from 1975 to 2009. It also discusses results from several major clinical trials comparing prostate cancer screening to no screening, and radical prostatectomy to observation for localized prostate cancer. The key findings are:
1) Prostate cancer incidence peaked in 1992 but mortality rates have been declining since the 1990s.
2) Large screening trials show screening increases prostate cancer diagnosis but does not reliably decrease prostate cancer mortality.
3) The PIVOT trial found that among men with localized prostate cancer, radical prostatectomy resulted in a 2.9% lower rate of death from any cause and a 2.6% lower rate of death from prostate