Men's health at a glance: A fact sheet for pharmacists

Drug Store News, July 20, 1998

* An estimated 184,500 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 1998. In the United States, one in five men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetimes.

* The death rate of men from prostate cancer has jumped 23 percent since 1973. An estimated 39,200 men will die of prostate cancer this year, making it the second leading cause of cancer death in men.

* In 1997, the government spent roughly $332 million for breast cancer research. Spending for prostate cancer was $82.3 million.

* The five-year survival rate for men with testicular cancer is estimated at 95 percent.

* Oral cancers occur more than twice as often in men as in women, with men over 40 having the highest incidence.

* Heart disease and strokes killed nearly 120,000 men ages 25 to 64 in 1995.

* Three times as many men as women suffer heart attacks before age 65. American men between the ages of 45 and 64 suffer an estimated 218,000 heart attacks a year, compared with 74,000 a year for women in the same age group.

* More than one-fourth of men who experience a heart attack-roughly 27 percent-will die within a year.

* Women visit physicians 30 percent more often than men.

* The incidence of bladder cancer is nearly four times higher in men than in women.

* In 1995 (the latest year for which final numbers are available), more men in the United States between the ages of 25 and 44 committed suicide than died of cancer.

* More than 30 percent of American men are overweight.

* Men drink and drive far more than women. Nearly 90 percent of all charges for driving under the influence in 1995 were filed against men.

* Diabetes afflicts roughly 8.2 percent of both the male and female population in the United States. But, an estimated 2.5 million men, or one-third of all male sufferers, don't even know they have the disease.

* Men represent 84 percent of all AIDS cases in the United States.

* Nearly three in four coronary artery bypasses in 1995-74 percent were performed on men.

* As many as 50 percent of all men between the ages of 40 and 70 experience problems maintaining their erections.

* As many as 60 percent of men over 50 with diabetes also suffer from impotence.

Sources: The National Men s Health Foundation, The National Institute of Health and The National Center for Health Statistics