Asim Shahmalak
He is a frequent media spokesman, and has written about the importance placed in hair over the centuries and the fact that baldness until recently was not recognised as a social or medical issue, despite the sometimes catastrophic impact it can have on confidence and mental well-being. He wrote: "Male pattern baldness (MPB), the main cause of hair loss, affects an estimated quarter of men by the age of 30 and two thirds by the age of 60. Until recently, the impact baldness might have on confidence and well-being was little understood or recognised by the medical profession at large."
Prostate cancer
Although the widespread use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening in the US has resulted in diagnosis at earlier age and cancer stage, the vast majority of cases are still diagnosed in men older than 65 years, and approximately 25% of cases are diagnosed in men older than 75 years. Though US National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines recommend using life expectancy greater than or less than 10 years to help make treatment decisions, in practice, many elderly patients are not offered curative treatment options such as radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy and are instead treated with hormonal therapy or watchful waiting. This pattern can be attributed to factors such as medical co-morbidity and patient preferences is regard to quality of life in addition to prostate cancer specific risk factors such as pretreatment PSA, Gleason score and clinical stage. As the average life expectancy increases due to advances in the treatment of cardiovascular, pulmonary and other chronic diseases, it is likely that more elderly patients will be living long enough to suffer the consequences of their prostate cancer. Therefore, there is currently much interest in the role of aggressive prostate cancer treatment modalities such as with surgery or radiation in the elderly population who have localized disease.