Let me be clear from the start. Men do die from prostate cancer, but there are encouraging statistics that would indicate that if men are proactive about regular exams and testing, the chances are relatively slim that prostate cancer will be the cause of their death.
Second only to skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer for men in the United States. 1 in 6 men will have prostate cancer at some point in their lives, but only 1 in 35 men will die from it. There are over 2 million prostate cancer survivors living in the United States today.
Compare that to lung cancer where the 1 year survival rate is only 20 percent; 5 year survival is 6 percent; and 10 year survival is 5 percent.
One of the primary reasons for the high survival rate with prostate cancer is early detection. 90 percent of cases are diagnosed when the cancer is either in stage 1, confined to the prostate, or stage 2, confined to the prostate and immediate areas. Finding and treating prostate cancer in stages 1 and 2 leads to a 5 year survival rate of nearly 100 percent. When the cancer has spread to other parts of the body, the five year survival rate drops to about 1 in 3, 32 percent, still far ahead of lung cancer at 6 percent.
It’s important to note that cancer survival rates are not true mortality rates. That is to say that it only measures deaths caused by the cancer. Because prostate cancer is often diagnosed in older men, quite often they pass away from something other than the cancer. For this reason the overall prostate cancer survival rates for 10 years is 93 percent and for 15 years is 77 percent.
It is these statistics that lead to more aggressive life insurance underwriting. Early stage, low grade prostate cancer is generally not going to be your cause of death and therefore, better than standard (average) rates are often approved.