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Foible No. 10. Most prostate cancers detected today are clinical stage T1c,
meaning that the biopsy was driven purely by an elevated serum PSA level. However,
many of these T1c tumors prove to be so small and bland that they would not be a
threat during the affected man’s lifetime. According to prostate pathologist
Jonathan Epstein, M.D. of John Hopkins University, the majority of patients
undergoing radical prostatectomy for T1c lesions have clinically insignificant
disease (Cancer 101:2001,2004)! Thus, Foible 9 relates to over-diagnosis and
over-treatment of small, bland tumors which may be incidentally detected when PSA
elevation is the sole indication for biopsy.
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