Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, a disease that affects about one in eight men in the U.S. The disease was “characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to “the bone,” his office said in a statement on Sunday. “While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.” According to the American Cancer Society, the five-year survival rates for metastatic prostate cancer are 37 percent. But Dr. Jonathan Reiner, CNN’s medical analyst, said Biden’s diagnosis presented both good and bad news. The bad news is that Biden got a high Gleason score, which measures how aggressive a patient’s prostate cancer is, and that the cancer is no longer confined to the prostate. The good news is that the tumor appears to be sensitive to hormone therapy. “When oncologists talk to patients, it‘s important for the patients to understand that they are not a statistic,” Reiner said on CNN Newsroom. “What they should only be interested [in] is, what is their outlook? What are the features of their tumor and their overall condition? Where does that point them? And to me, it sounds like there‘s a lot to do here.”
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