By Hannah Kerfoot
This September is Urology Awareness Month, an event which has been held since 2014 when the Urology Foundation established it to help people to understand more about urological conditions, as the incidence rate of these conditions was on the rise.
Every year, the Urology Awareness Month has had a theme, and this year’s is ‘Men’s Urology Health: Myths and Legends’. One of the key goals of this year’s awareness month is to allow men to speak more openly about their health, and to seek care for it before problems worsen.
Earlier in the year, Pharmora celebrated Men’s Health Week, which also championed the themes of openness in men’s healthcare. In response to both of these initiatives, Pharmora has looked into the changing landscape of prostate cancer treatment. Look out for a blog on this fascinating topic of the developments in this treatment area (Click here)!
Urology awareness month includes not only prostate cancer but testicular cancer as well as all urological cancers – in addition to bladder issues, erectile dysfunction, and kidney stones. In fact, the whole of urology health includes the urinary tract system and the reproductive organs (kidneys, bladder, ureters, urethra, prostate, and testes). This means that the conditions highlighted in this awareness day are diverse and can affect lots of different demographics.
Helping to combat these issues are a number of researchers, urologists, nurses and health care professionals, who not only want the best for individual patients, but for development in the health care area as a whole. They all benefit from the increased awareness of these conditions, and from people willing to help and generously donate to charities like The Urology Foundation.
For men, one of the most common urological conditions is Prostate Cancer. In fact, 1 in 8 males in the UK will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lives (Cancer Research UK). But it isn’t just prostate cancer, in fact bladder cancer, too, affects men more often than women, with 1 in 55 men being diagnosed with the condition (Lifetime risk estimates calculated by the Cancer Intelligence Team at Cancer Research UK 2023). According to Cancer Research UK, 49% of these bladder cancer cases in the UK are preventable, which is another reason why highlighting men’s need to get checked if they feel something out of the ordinary is so important.
The lack of reporting in men is common knowledge, and it can lead to a late diagnosis, which often worsens the overall outcome of diseases. So, we encourage men to be a ‘Legend’, speak up and get checked!
