Movember, the mustache campaign which raises awareness among men about male cancer screening

Handlebar, horseshoe, pencil line, fang, English style… Once again, the mustache, whatever its shape, is making a comeback this fall. If the number of “moustachus” is exploding these days, don’t see it as an excess of virility. The return of facial hair among men is above all intended to be a protest and is part of the Movember campaign. Contraction of mustache and November, this operation organized by the Movember Foundation Charity, since 2003, encourages men to let their hair grow for four weeks.

Its main objective is to raise awareness among men about male diseases. Concretely, it encourages them to take care of their attributes. Just like Pink October, the breast cancer screening campaign, men are encouraged to monitor their prostate and testicles.

“Mortality should even fall”

With 59,800 new cases treated in 2018, prostate cancer is the most common in men. With one death every hour following prostate cancer, according to the alert from the French Urology Association, we better understand the urgency to talk about it.

Located under the bladder, it is the talk of the town as people approach sixty. “It is a disease of the elderly. The increase in life expectancy and an increasingly early diagnosis explain the increase in its incidencedevelops Doctor Jochen Walz, surgeon-urologist at the Paoli-Calmettes Institute in Marseille. On the other hand, mortality is stable, it should even fall.“

Asymptomatic, prostate cancer is often discovered incidentally during a blood test with PSA (prostate specific antigen) or following urinary disorders. “A desire to urinate frequently is often a reason for consultation“, concedes the specialist, but there is not really an established cause and effect link.

Another problem is the PSA level. You have to be wary of the latter. It gives us a probability, never a certainty. It fluctuates depending on our lifestyle. “Cycling, having a relationship… influences the result. On the other hand, an MRI makes it possible to better identify the patient at risk and thus avoid overdiagnosis and overtreatment. This is one of the objectives to improve in the management of this pathology.“

Concerning the care strategy, the choice is adapted to the personal case of each patient of the place, its location, its severity. “In a large majority of cases, we have to monitor it through regular examinations. We only react if the illness changes its character. For aggressive local forms, surgery is the standard treatment. The appearance of robotic surgery, which has become the standard of surgical procedure, has had the advantage of reducing these side effects such as urinary incontinence or erectile function disorders. We try to find the right compromise, the benefit risks.”

Another notable advance with stereotactic radiotherapy which makes it possible to irradiate the tumor with optimal efficiency and reduce the number of sessions: “Five to seven days compared to seven weeks previously.”

Still, although prostate cancer is most common in mature men, it has a very good prognosis. 95% of people diagnosed are alive five years later, and 80% at ten years.