New clinic offers free prostate cancer checks

The nation’s first outpatient clinic offering free prostate cancer screening and risk evaluation was launched at Shanghai Cancer Center on Thursday.

Fewer than 40 percent of prostate cancer patients in China are detected the disease in early stage, compared with the 80 percent in Western countries due to a lack of an early screening system. The cancer had spread in around 30 percent of Chinese patients by the time they were diagnosed, compared with just 4 percent in the West.

“We are pushing early screening for high risk groups,” said project leader Dr Ye Dingwei, director of the center’s urological surgery department. “The five-year survival rate is over 90 percent in the United States because of the wide adoption of early screening. It is only 62.9 percent in China. Early screening is the key.”

He said men over 50, men over 45 with a family history of the disease and men over 40 with high biomarkers for a prostate-specific antigen should be screened.

Ye’s team launched a prostate cancer screening program since 2017 using a simple blood test to check biomarkers in 3,502 people at high risk in Shanghai, identifying 44 with early prostate cancer. Thirty-five had received surgery, greatly improving their prospects of long-term survival.

At the new clinic in the center’s Pudong wing, patients only need to pay the registration fee of 25 yuan ((US$3.85) ) for free cancer screening and consultation. Those detected with problems will be hospitalized for further checks, surgery and rehabilitation, the hospital said.

The first patient at the clinic was a man, whose 73-year-old father had suffered prostate cancer. He wanted to know if he was at risk. 

After checks revealed that everything was normal, doctors advised him on the importance of regular screening and on healthy lifestyles.