It’s as big weekend for the Hunt family, whose Kansas City Chiefs are in the Super Bowl for the first time in half a century. They lost their beloved patriarch, Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, to prostate cancer in 2006, when he was just 74.
“This would be just a dream for Lamar,” Norma Hunt, Lamar Hunt’s widow, said at the presentation of the Lamar Hunt Trophy — named for the iconic sports team owner — after the Chiefs won the AFC Championship game. “He loved the fans more than any person that I’ve ever known.”
Read MoreLamar Hunt and Football
At 26, Hunt, whose father was an oil tycoon, desperately wanted to own a football team. Having the means, he made the bold choice to start his own league. The AFL debuted in 1960 with eight teams, including Hunt's own Dallas Texans. The Texans held their own against the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, but after battling it out in Dallas for three years, Hunt moved his team to Kansas City in 1963 and renamed them the Chiefs. Talks eventually lead to the merger of the AFL and the NFL.
Legend has it that Hunt coined the term “super bowl” a riff on a toy his children played with called a "super ball."
Lamar Hunt’s Cancer and Progress with the Disease
Hunt was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998, according to the Chiefs’ website. He battled cancer for several years and then was hospitalized just before Thanksgiving in 2006 due to a partially collapsed lung, reported the Ashland Tidings. It said that doctors discovered that the cancer had spread. He died that December.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, and the American Cancer Society estimates that over 33,000 men will die from the disease in 2020. But as we continue to see advances in diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer, deaths from the disease are declining sharply. Between 1993 and 2017, the death rate for prostate cancer fell 52%, according to a study from the American Cancer Institute published this year.
RELATED VIDEO: Dr. James Brooks, a urologic oncologist at Stanford Hospital & Clinics, discusses current guidelines for prostate cancer screening
"There have certainly been some major changes, advancements and new treatments for the disease in the last 14 years," Dr. Frank Jevnikar, a urologist in the Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute at Cleveland Clinic, tells SurvivorNet.
Techniques for screening and diagnosis have also changed tremendously since Hunt's 1998 diagnosis. "Now instead of relying on biopsies, we use MRI scans to assess not only the likelihood of having prostate cancer, but also to pinpoint the location of tumors," he says.
New Treatments Offer New Hope
The evolution of prostate cancer treatments over the past decade means more men are now surviving the disease. Even treatments that have been in use for decades have improved and become more effective. Hormone therapy is one example.
"We now have new drugs that are much more effective at manipulating a patient's hormone levels to halt the spread and progression of prostate cancer," Dr. Christopher George, a hematologist and oncologist at Northwestern Medicine Cancer Center Delnor, tells SurvivorNet.
RELATED: Vegetable-Rich Diet Won't Stop or Slow Prostate Cancer, New Study ShowsRadiation is another area that's seen many advancements, including more precise dosing to target prostate cancer cells. "Proton beam therapy appears to be every bit as effective as conventional radiation and may have fewer side effects," says Dr. George. "And for more advanced disease we are now able to inject radioactive particles into the bloodstream where they find and bind to prostate cancer cells."
RELATED: A Crucial Message: Ben Stiller's Candid Account About Sex After Prostate Cancer
If removal of the prostate is necessary, that operation called a radical prostatectomy has also changed tremendously.
"Robotic-assisted laparoscopic technology has revolutionized radical prostatectomy, allowing surgeons to better visualize the anatomy and perform more precise reconstruction after removal of the prostate gland," says Dr. Jevnikar. "This also means fewer issues with side effectssuch as sexual dysfunction and urinary incontinencethat used to be common and expected after surgery."
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.