Tuesday, September 9, 2025
Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of every disease’s respective “month.” One caught our eyes — and our hearts — recently: Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. Held every September, it helps to raise awareness about the most common non-skin cancer in men worldwide.
This year, we have a personal connection to the disease. Robert Devaney, The Georgetowner’s longtime editor-in-chief, is currently battling it with strength, grit and his signature sense of humor.
To help raise awareness about the disease — and hopefully help other men understand how to prevent and treat it — we spoke to Paul Denis Leger, MD, MPH, a medical oncologist at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital who is Robert’s doctor.?
“The older men get, the higher risk they have of developing prostate cancer,” said Dr. Leger. “If you test every man over 70 or 80 years old, you will find that more than 10 to 20 percent of them will have prostate cancer.”?
Most will die of another cause, but the disease is quite prevalent among the aging male population.?
Dr. Leger noted some risk factors, such as having a family member with prostate cancer. If a first-degree family member, such as your father, has prostate cancer, you have a higher risk of developing the disease.?
The main point to convey, he stressed, is that most men do not know they have prostate cancer, since there are no symptoms in its early stages. “The only way to get early diagnosis is screening,” said Dr. Leger, who added that he considers the current recommendations regarding screening to be quite weak.?Men at average risk should start talking to their primary care doctor about screening at age 50.??
There have been some recent changes for those considered higher risk. African Americans, for instance, should start discussing screening with their primary care doctor at age 45.?The bottom line is: to get diagnosed early, men need to be screened.?
“We do have a pretty good screening test, a blood test we call PSA that stands for prostate specific antigen,” said Dr. Leger. “It’s a blood test that detects protein in the blood that tells you how likely it is that you have the disease.”?
If your test result is outside of the normal range, which is between 0 and 4, or if you have a rapid increase in the number from one year to the next, there is cause for concern.?
If the result is considered abnormal, patients typically see a urologist to have an MRI, then a biopsy if there is still concern, to confirm or rule out the presence of cancer.?
Dr. Leger personally works with prostate cancer support groups, talking about the importance of screening. His research focuses on the innovative treatment of prostate cancer, particularly metastatic cancer. He also works to understand why certain populations are at higher risk and conducts research on treatments to slow down disease progression.?
After receiving his medical degree from the State University of Haiti School of Medicine, Dr. Leger completed his residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. A fellowship in hematology oncology at the National Institutes of Health followed.
He chose to pursue a degree in medicine because he likes human contact and improving a patient’s quality of life.?
“I am from the developing world, from the island of Haiti, and before I went to cancer, I was a specialist in HIV,” he said. “When I came here, I had to repeat most of my training to be licensed to practice medicine here, so I wanted to try something new.”?
Always interested in genetics, he found even more applications of genetics to cancer than to infectious disease, which is why he decided to work in oncology.?
“It’s a great adventure and a lot of challenges, but there is gratification knowing that you can make an impact on someone’s life and have an impact on their journey,” he said. “Even when we cannot prolong a patient’s life, we can at least make their journey easier.”?