WHEN Carl Canty was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he felt left in the dark about what to do. He tells health reporter Kate Liptrot why more needs to be done to advise men about treatment.

“THANK God I did it” Carl Canty said, remembering his decision to ask for a blood test.

When a friend’s prostate cancer was picked up by fluke, the 64-year-old engineer was persuaded to ask his doctor for a PSA (prostate specific antigen) blood test. It saved his life as Carl was diagnosed with prostate cancer soon after.

Just three months on, Carl, a father of three grown-up children from Bubwith, has been given the all-clear having undergone a successful operation with Hampshire-based prostate cancer specialist Christopher Eden.

It’s a world away from when he was first diagnosed and asked to make a decision about the treatment he would like. The options available to him – surgery and radiotherapy – were explained, but as Carl said: “You are suddenly asked “what sort of treatment do you want?” and you are a layman.

“It’s like taking a car into the garage and them saying “what do you want us to do?” People I have talked to just panic. It’s impossible for experts to put over enough information for the patient to make a decision. It’s virtually impossible to make the decision.

“There needs to be more information. Even some of the specialists don’t agree.”

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, with over 40,000 new cases diagnosed every year. It is also among the most feared, not least because key measures to tackle it — surgery to remove the prostate or radiotherapy — can leave men impotent or incontinent.

Carl said: “Although consultants will argue in favour of the benefits of their own chosen method, there is a lack of definitive information to prove the superiority of one approach over another.”

With the help of research and advice from a family friend, Carl decided against the radiotherapy route doctors seemed to be suggesting, and contacted Hampshire-based Mr Eden, who performed a laparoscopic prostatectomy to remove the prostate gland. This is a type of keyhole surgery which spared 95 per cent of the nerves surrounding the prostate.

The operation, which was done privately, revealed the tumour was more aggressive than had been estimated from the biopsy.

It was a success with minimal side effects and Carl was given the all-clear at his one month consultation, with a 13 per cent chance of recurrence in the next ten years.

With hindsight he believes radiotherapy would not have been the right option.

“I feel extremely lucky and have done the right thing about it,” Carl said, who emphasised the confusion over treatment was a national issue, “I feel very sorry for some of the people diagnosed at the same time as me. It has been impossible for them to make the decision I made.

“The attitude to prostate cancer in the US is such they almost blanket-screen people. Seventy per cent of US men know their PSA and less than seven per cent of UK men know.

There must be millions of men walking around with prostate cancer in the UK.”

The charity, Prostate Cancer UK, said Carl’s concerns over choosing treatment were ones they had heard before. Alexis Wieroniey, campaigns manager at Prostate Cancer UK, said: “Receiving a diagnosis for prostate cancer and choosing which treatment to have can be a troubling time. The lack of clarity around diagnosis can lead to uncertainty about which is the best treatment option.

“Unfortunately, treatments for prostate cancer all carry the risk of significant side effects such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction. For this reason it is vitally important that a man has the opportunity to discuss the different options with a clinician to work out what is best for him situation.

“As part of our campaign to improve the quality of care men receive across the UK, we have been calling for more information to be consistently provided to men throughout their treatment, to help them make those difficult choices.”