How Common Is Incidental Prostate Cancer?

Autopsy studies have demonstrated a high prevalence of asymptomatic localized prostate cancer among men who die from other causes. This observation leads some critics to worry that prostate cancer screening leads to unnecessarily aggressive intervention in many men who would not develop symptomatic disease within their lifetimes.

General autopsy studies might include disproportionately large numbers of debilitated men. Presuming that organ donors would represent a healthier population, pathologists from Pittsburgh carefully examined the prostates of 340 men who were accepted as organ donors after they died unexpectedly from trauma, homicide, suicide, stroke, or cardiac arrest. None had known prostate cancer. The prevalence of prostate cancer…