ALAN JONES missed his annual medical check-up last year because his regular doctor had died. "That's where I came unstuck," he said yesterday, after revealing he is now one of more than 18,000 Australian men diagnosed every year with prostate cancer.

But Jones could be one of the lucky ones. His Gleason score, which measures the severity of the disease, reveals the cancer may not have spread.

Prostate cancer accounts for 31 per cent of all cancers in men. About 3000 men die from it every year, but many avoid testing because they dislike rectal examinations, are less health conscious than men from other countries and fear the outcome will affect their sex lives, Jones's doctor Phil Stricker, the chairman of urology at St Vincent's Clinic, said yesterday.

"But they are getting better - only 5 per cent of men had their prostates checked 10 years ago, and that is up to about 40 per cent in Sydney now," he said.

The prostate is at the top of the urethra within the nerves controlling erections, and produces fluid to protect and enrich sperm. In younger men, it is about the size of a walnut but can balloon 10-fold when it becomes cancerous.

Kate Benson