Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. But what does it mean for this type of cancer to be called aggressive?

As a urologic surgeon who specializes in diagnosing and treating prostate cancer, I often explain to my patients that aggressiveness isn’t based on a single factor. Instead, it comes from understanding how abnormal the cancer cells look, known as the tumor’s grade; how far they’ve spread, known as the tumor’s stage; and their genetic fingerprint.

Grade: Decoding Cancer Cell Appearance

One key piece of the puzzle is the cancer’s grade, which indicates the tumor’s potential to grow. After a prostate biopsy, a doctor specializing in examining tissues – a pathologist – grades the tumor by comparing the

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