Former President Biden is in a tough spot, but he's not alone. An estimated 313,780 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed this year, representing 15% of all new cancer cases, according to the National Institutes of Health. And thanks in part to Biden's own efforts, "survival rates have almost tripled in the last decade," a doctor tells the New York Times. More:
- Diagnosis: A small nodule was discovered in Biden's prostate following a physical exam on Tuesday. That led to an evaluation and a diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer on Friday.
- No cure: Biden's cancer cells have already spread to the bone. The cancer is Stage 4, the most deadly stage, and "cannot be cured," per the Times. Still, 82-year-old Biden, the oldest president in US history, may have years left to live.
- Survival rates: With recent advances in treatment, patients with prostate cancer that has spread to their bones can live another 5 to 10 years, an expert tells the Times. "About a third of patients will still be alive after five years of metastatic prostate cancer," a urologist tells the BBC.
- Gleason score: The Gleason grading system evaluates how likely cancer is to advance and spread, based on how abnormal the cancer cells look in a biopsy sample, offering a score between 6 and 10. Biden's score of 9 indicates a high-grade, aggressive cancer "with a greater likelihood of metastasis and a more challenging prognosis," per ABC News.
- Treatment: Surgery is not typically an option in a case like Biden's, where the cancer has spread beyond the prostate and to bone, per ABC. But hormone therapy or androgen deprivation therapy can reduce levels of testosterone, which feeds prostate cancer, while chemotherapy or radiation can be used to treat cancer in the bones, per the Times.
- Full circle moment: Some well-wishers have pointed out Biden is in a better spot today than he would've been without the Cancer Moonshot initiative, a project to accelerate cancer research, which he led as vice president and relaunched as president, per CNN. He "was one of the first presidents to put cancer on the forefront," one prostate cancer specialist tells the Times.
See how President Trump and others have responded to the diagnosis
here. (More
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