India has high death rate due to prostate cancer: Doc

Tribune News Service

Patiala, January 19

Renowned cancer specialist Dr Devinder Singh Sandhu delivered a guest lecture entitled ‘Prostate Cancer Screening – Asians Vs Americans’ at the 33rd International Punjabi Vikas Conference at Punjabi University here today.

He said “India has high death rate due to prostate cancer despite having less patients as compared to the US. In fact, Asians are ‘low risk group’ for prostate cancer as prostate cancer is 10 times more common in Americans than in Asians. While blacks are in high risk category, whites are in average and Asians fall in low risk category.”

Dr Sandhu said every year, over 11 lakh new cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed and three lakh died out of it across the world. Interestingly, American blacks had the highest incidence while Asian immigrants in the US had lowest rate, he said.

He advocated regular PSA testing for Asians starting at 45 years of age as against 50 years for whites and 40 years for blacks. PSA testing should stop at 60 years in Asian immigrants as against 70 years in whites. This difference is due to diagnosis of cancers at early age in Indians and less life expectancy of around 67 years in Indians as compared to the Americans who have life expectancy of 78 years.

Dr Sandhu, who runs a Sandhu Cancer Centre here, has also educated American doctors during his 45-minute lecture at the Centre for Experiential Learning at University of Rochester, New York, in July last year in a two-day continued medical education (CME) programme The CME was granted eight credit hours by the university.

He is pioneer in cancer treatment in the region having performed Punjab’s first ever bone marrow transplant (BMT) at Ludhiana in 2006. He has published dozens of cancer research papers in peer reviewed international and national indexed cancer journals. He is a reviewer of many journals, including Indian Journal of Medical and Pediatric Oncology. The Mother Teresa Institute for Medical Technology has honored Dr Sandhu with Mother Teresa-2016 Award.