PROSTATE CANCER IN THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS: YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW
An analysis of the disease dynamics, condition of diagnostics, survival and mortality caused by prostate cancer according to the data of Belarusian Cancer Registeris presented. The frequency of these tumors in Belarus is much lower than in other European countries and in the USA. At the same time dynamics of this disease distribution differs sufficiently by a fast growth and for the period reviewed — 1990 to 2011 — the incidence has increased almost six times and the mortality — 2.5 times. The disease occurrence among the urban population has been determined to be reliably much higher than among the rural population. Traditional professional surveys for last 20 years have not led to the early diagnostics improvement, development and introduction of scientifically substantiated screening programs being necessary. The average five years corrected survival rate of patients treated in 2007—2011 is 83. 97. The best results were observed in groups of patients exposed to a radical prostatectomy and those undergone prostatectomy combined with drugs administration and radiation treatment. The pilot project of screening for prostate cancer in Belarus was started in three regions of the country in 2011. The cohort (n=20,076) included men aged 50 to 65 years including 1,128 (5.4%) persons having the prostate antigen levels higher the reference one at the first stage of the screening. Coverage control biopsy was 918 (81%) persons and prostate cancer was diagnosed in 27% of the individuals exposed to biopsy or 1.2% (1,200 per 100,000) of the subjects screened.