A 62-year-old Frankfurter is part of a story whose screenplay should almost write itself.

The short form: Four brothers, four cancer diagnoses and a happy ending.

Hans-Otto, who doesn't want to read his last name in the newspaper, and his siblings all had prostate cancer.

Three of them have only been diagnosed in the past few months.

Thanks to the early detection, however, the brothers are "cured according to everything we now know," says the resident specialist in urology Magnus Volk.

He discovered the tumors in all the brothers and - to round off the picture book story - he is also the cousin of the four.

The fact that the siblings attach so much importance to regular check-ups does not only have to do with their cousin's job.

The death of her father, who died of prostate cancer 25 years ago, may also have made her aware of the disease.

Four years ago the first carcinoma was found in one of the brothers, in July of this year that of another, in September Hans-Otto received his diagnosis, only two weeks later the fourth brother also received the test results.

A family predisposition is not unusual, says Felix Chun, director of the urology clinic at the University Hospital in Frankfurt.

In fact, according to him, the probability of developing prostate carcinoma is around 32.5 percent if your own father already suffered from the disease.

If you have a brother with prostate cancer, you get the disease yourself in almost 87 percent of the cases, says the doctor.

At his urology clinic, two of the four brothers were cured with radical removal of their prostates.

The other two were treated in Hamburg.

Prostate cancer doesn't hurt

When it comes to prostate cancer, there is no one ideal way to diagnose it.

The results of various tests, such as the value of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and its development, as well as imaging processes, are often put together like pieces of a puzzle to form a larger whole in which the tumor focus can be identified.

Sometimes, as in the case of Hans-Otto, it only becomes clear how aggressive the cancer is when tissue is removed during the operation.

However, the reason for a differentiated diagnosis is always the classic, manual palpation of the prostate by the urologist, explains Volk: “That is still the basis of early detection.

If you feel something there, you have to investigate it.”

In addition to the complex diagnosis, the disease has another perfidious peculiarity: "The worst thing is, it doesn't hurt if you have prostate carcinoma," reports Hans-Otto.

However, if symptoms do appear, the disease is often far advanced.

Once the cancer is systemic, i.e. it spreads to the entire organ system, healing is almost impossible, reports urologist Chun.

One in six men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetime.

This makes it the most common cancer among men of all ages and, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), also their second leading cause of death.

"It's not just a banal cancer of old age," emphasizes Volk.

“There are around 70,000 new cases every year,” he says.

The number is increasing rapidly.

In 1980 there were less than 17,000, as data from the RKI show.

Volk cites demographic change and improved diagnostics as reasons for this.

“But a disaster is that the mortality rate is not going down.

We're just not getting any better at preventing deaths - and that's what hurts a doctor so much."

The focus is therefore placed on timely detection.

Because nowadays prostate cancer can be "diagnosed early and treated excellently," says the urologist.

The prerequisite for this, however, is that men from the age of 45 – in the case of family predispositions from the age of 40 – attend the early detection service provided by the statutory health insurance companies.

However, men are often really “precautionary grumps”, Chun complains.

Only about one in five take the check-ups.

"No one likes doing that," admits Hans-Otto, "but it's also nothing that hurts or is anything dramatic.

If you don't do that, you're actually acting irresponsibly.” Because early detection can save lives, even whole families - like that of Hans-Otto and his three brothers.

Rapid recovery through early detection

"We have the problem of our socialization and our understanding of roles," speculates urologist Chun with regard to the reasons why men attend check-ups less often than women.

"An Indian knows no pain" would be drummed into many boys.

According to him, men often anchor in their identity the feeling of having to be strong and unassailable and not allowed to get sick in the first place.

They subconsciously perceive themselves as "protectors".

In addition, “urological examinations are definitely fraught with shame,” says Volk.

If a prostate carcinoma is discovered early enough, state-of-the-art and minimally invasive interventions promise rapid improvement.

In the Frankfurt University Hospital, the doctors usually operate with the help of the Da Vinci assistance system.

The robot, named after the universal genius, functions as an extended arm for the operator, who sits at his control unit.

A small HD camera gives the doctor in question a precise picture of the cancer: "You have the feeling of floating in the patient's body," describes Chun.

The anatomical structure of the prostate can be identified exactly and the procedure can be carried out precisely.

A positive side effect: After a Da Vinci operation, the patient is usually back on his feet particularly quickly.

"We urologists are pioneers in surgery," says Chun.