NHS spend on testicular and prostate Cancer compared to Breast and cervical ?
Me and the wife were having a discussing about the relative nhs investment and mortality rates of male and female cancers (as she is a school nurse assistant). I maintain that male cancers (testicular / prostate) are not taken as seriously as female cancers (breast and cervical) and have less investment in them. Does anyone know if there is a disparity between the four cancers and why this is the case?
Please don’t cloud the issue by telling me that men suffer with breast cancer, I know!
This is a very interesting question, and when you get your answers would like it if you would post a comment on http://www.after-cancer.com
Am writing this web site to help fellow breast cancer patients, as I have found many clinically trialled products that can help us deal with hormonal drug side effects, but doctors often don’t have time to discuss these.
When I was nicely taken to task by a male browser, who told me that men also suffer from side effects of hormonal drugs – dry skin, loss of sight, etc. So it now has a Men Only section!
Verite R
You’re right about NHS spend on cancer services – by far the single largest spend is on breast related tumors. However, that’s not to say that other tumor sites are taken less seriously – the incidence of breast cancer is much higher than it is for testicular and prostate, and sadly, the prognosis for breast cancer if left untreated is far worse than for testicular or prostate. So it’s not as simple as saying that they’re taken less seriously as they’re very different diseases.
The other, less palatable consideration is that testicular and prostate cancers don’t affect glamorous/famous women (Kylie, Linda McCartney) and to a large extent, prostate cancer is also a disease of old age – by the time men get to 90, over 90% of them will have prostate cancer but it might not be giving them any trouble at all. A lot of men die with it, but not of it. Again the same isn’t true of breast cancer – unfortunately there are several strains of the disease where the outcomes are very poor indeed, even if caught early, and that is rarely the case with prostate and testicular.
So in summary, on the whole there is a clear relationship to NHS spend vs morbidity and mortality in cancers – back to the QALY argument really (see NICE).
I think some of it is how much coverage they get. Breast cancer has a huge promotional effort behind it and is a big money make so they spend lots of money on research.