Prostate Cancer in Firemen: Early Diagnosis Because of Increased Diagnostic Pressure?

Firefighters, police, military personnel and pilots are all shown to have a higher incidence of prostate cancer than the general population. A possible explanation for this is that these four groups of employees need regular mandatory health-checkups. If these checkups increase the chances of having a PSA or DRE performed one could expect the workers in question to have a higher probability than the general population of being diagnosed with prostate cancer. If this is the case the four groups should have cancers that are lower grade and have better survival. The investigators wish to examine this by comparing the four groups with a control group made up of all other workers with regards to prognostic factors at the time of diagnosis and survival rates. This will be done by extracting data from the Cancer Registry of Norway, coupled with employment data from Statistics Norway. This study is also a part of a project on cancer in firefighters. If the prostate cancers in firefighters differ significantly from the other three specified groups, this could point to an exposure specific for firefighters, e.g. fire smoke, as an etiologic factor.