Prostate cancer likely spread, doctor says

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This article was published 26/07/2011 (5225 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Gaunt with weight loss, his voice strained, Jack Layton revealed to the nation Monday that he is fighting a new cancer, though he didn’t specify just what he’s up against.

It’s rare, but not impossible, for someone diagnosed with one cancer to develop a second cancer unrelated in any way to the first, said Dr. Bill Orovan, professor and chair of the department of surgery at McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine in Hamilton.

The stiffness and pain Layton said he began suffering in the days before the House of Commons rose for the summer break suggests “musculoskeletal involvement,” Orovan said.

“The common sites for metastases of prostate cancer are, Number 1, regional lymph nodes and, Number 2, bones” — particularly flat bones such as the ribs, pelvis and skull.

“He’s saying ‘new’ but it might just be a new location,” Orovan said.

Layton has been battling prostate cancer for more than a year. Weeks before the writ dropped prompting an election last spring, he underwent surgery for a broken hip. He’s been walking with a forearm crutch or cane since.

“My battle against prostate cancer, as it turns out from these tests, is going very well,” Layton, 61, said Tuesday. The NDP leader said his PSA levels remain “very, very low.” PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, is a protein produced by the prostate gland that increases when cancer is present

But Layton said he has a new, “non-prostate cancer” that will require further treatment. On the advice of his doctors, “I’m going to focus on treatment and recovery,” he said.

Officials at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, where Layton has been getting treatment for prostate cancer since his February 2010 diagnosis, said in a statement “new tumours were discovered which appear to be unrelated to the original cancer and Mr. Layton is now being treated for this cancer.”

Layton said his PSA is nearly undetectable. “If it had been undetectable, as it should be after treatment, that would be one thing,” Orovan said. “But he didn’t say that, so one wonders if this may in fact be a new manifestation of the same cancer.”

Orovan said Layton may have had more advanced prostate cancer because he chose radiation over surgery. For someone his age, “generally speaking, surgical removal would be the treatment of choice.”

Layton’s dramatic weight loss could be the consequences of radiation, doctors said. But many tumours secrete proteins that cause cachexia — weight loss caused by decreased appetite and muscle wasting.

— Postmedia News