UTHealth Houston surgeon weighs in on former President Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis

HOUSTON — Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer days after a small nodule was found during a routine physical, a spokesperson for the former president confirmed Sunday.

Biden, 82, was seen last week by doctors after experiencing urinary symptoms. A prostate nodule was found. He was officially diagnosed with prostate cancer Friday, with the cancer cells having spread “to the bone.”

Steven Canfield, prostate cancer surgeon and chief of the division of urology at UTHealth Houston, spoke to KHOU 11 News about Biden’s diagnosis.

“It can continue to spread to other places, other bony sites, or other lymph nodes once it’s already spread. That’s certainly a risk. So it may be that somebody, older than that wouldn’t normally be screened anymore. And that’s one way that you might be surprised later on,” he said.

Biden’s cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive, which could allow for more effective management.

“In men, shutting down testosterone, you can stop and slow the growth of prostate cancer,” Canfield said.

Canfield said chemotherapy is an option, but it’s typically not given by itself.

“It’s given with other forms of hormone suppression and a combination of treatments,” he said. “Part of the strategy may no longer be to try to cure the disease, but to prevent it from spreading further and, to, to stabilize it or make the areas that have disease disappear. There’s different ways to do that.”

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among men in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society.