MARGATE, Fla. – According to the CDC, one out of every 100 American men may be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lives and many are affected by a common but often overlooked warning sign of advanced prostate cancer.
Seventy-one-year-old Anthony Letts was just walking to his car one day when suddenly, his legs gave out from under him.
“I had no notice of it. I was just walking and then I just go right down, right down to my knees,” Letts said.
A friend helped him get up and get in his car.
“I drove home, told my wife what happened, and then I drove straight to Broward General,” he said.
Letts had suffered a hip fracture, an injury that’s actually a warning sign of advanced prostate cancer.
“If a prostate cancer is left undiagnosed, it can metastasize to the bones and once the cancer metastasized to the bone, it can cause bone damage. Not just the cancer itself, but something called reabsorption, so the body actually chews up the bone,” said Dr. Mehmet Hepgur, a hematologist-oncologist with Broward Health North.
A recent Danish study of more than 60,000 men found that those over the age of 50 with undiagnosed prostate cancer are four times more likely to suffer a hip fracture.
“Our goal is to diagnose prostate cancer before it’s too late, because if we can catch prostate cancer in early stages the patient can get surgery or radiation or hormone therapy and they can be cured,” Hepgur said.
Letts underwent surgery to repair the fracture, followed by treatment for the prostate cancer, and then there was good news from his doctor.
“That he told me I’m completely free of the cancer,” Letts said.
The latest studies show fracture risk appears shortly after diagnosis and is still pronounced in long-term survivors of prostate cancer.