Myth 5

Fact: While the five-year survival rate with prostate cancer is very high — Over 90 percent, according to the American Cancer Society — it’s still the second leading cause of cancer death in men. The only cancer that kills more men is lung cancer.

Most prostate cancers are what doctors call “indolent,” which means that they grow slowly and can often be actively monitored over the course of many years without other treatment. But sometimes prostate cancer is aggressive and grows quickly.

While most men don’t have a prostate cancer that’s fast and deadly it does exist, and you won’t know which type you have until it’s thoroughly checked out.

In other words, assuming prostate cancer isn’t serious — and not having further testing because of this misconception — could be a downright deadly way of approaching the illness.

The dangers and risks of prostate cancer aren’t distributed evenly among American men, either. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health reports that African-American men are 2.3 times as likely to die from prostate cancer as compared to non-Hispanic white men.

The risk that prostate cancer will be fatal depends on how aggressive it is and the other medical conditions you may have.

The good news is that for all stages of prostate cancer, the survival rates are high: The five-year survival rate is nearly 100 percent; the 10-year survival rate is 98 percent; and the 15-year survival rate is 95 percent.

Prostate cancer can be a serious disease, but most men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not die from it. In fact, more than 3.1 million men in the United States who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point are still alive today.