Cancer diagnoses up, doctors call for prostate cancer screening

Some 130,000  people were diagnosed with cancer last year, up 3,000 from 2023, cancer centre IKNL has said.

Population growth and longer life expectancy are the main drivers behind the rise, the IKNL said.  With over 15,000 new diagnoses, prostate cancer and breast cancer cases are now practically on a par, the figures show.

Unlike breast cancer, prostate cancer has more often spread to different parts of the body before it is discovered. In 2023, 3,000 men had metastasised prostate cancer while in 1,000 women the breast cancer was found to have spread.

In 2023, the figures for prostate cancer deaths superseded those for breast cancer for the first time.

Screening

Early prostate cancer does not have any symptoms but there is currently no national screening programme to speed up diagnoses.

Early diagnosis and accessible care remain key, urologist Harm Melick told broadcaster NOS.  “There is no such programme in place anywhere in the world at the moment,” Melick said.

“In Europe, the discussions about the need for one started five years ago but the biopsies which it would necessitate were thought to be too painful for routine screening and risky because of infection.”

Some of the cancers that were discovered through biopsies were mild and did not need treatment, Melick said. Newer methods, such as MRI scans are less invasive and can show the difference between mild and more aggressive tumours, he said.

“Biopsies could be fewer and more targetted. With these improvements and the increase in diagnoses it is important to investigate the possibility of a screening programme,” Melick said.

MRI scans for women who have dense breast tissue and whose cancer goes undetected have been considered too expensive for routine screening. The UMC Utrecht is currently trialling two alternative methods: a short five-minute MRI scan and a so-called contrast scan, a 2D scan combined with a contrasting fluid injected into the patient beforehand which makes potential tumours more visible.