Steve Allen - Brief Background

I thought you might like just to have a bit of background about me:

I am now 72 yrs old. I had major surgery for PCa 12 years ago with very good result as far as the cancer is concerned. I have, however, had a few of the common 'functional' plumbing problems that men can get afterwards.Some further surgery has made a lot of difference. Recent advances in diagnosis and treatment are radically changing the face of PCa and I ensure that I am up to date with those changes.

I have always had a passion for spreading awareness about PCa. I have talked to many groups of people before as a volunteer for Prostate Cancer UK.

At many meetings some of people who attended were far from being in the at risk age group. However, I firmly believe that such talks are of value - the men (and women) who attend will all have male relatives to whom they can relay information. Such meetings are never a waste of time.
I also wear a few other other ‘hats’:

I am a past Chairman of the Reading Prostate Cancer Support Group. Over the past 8 years we have doubled our membership to over 100 – which shows how important PCa is to the community. I am still a very active member of Reading PCSG.

I work as a volunteer with another UK PCa Charity – Tackle Prostate Cancer. Through them I have become a [patient representative with NICE, the National Prostate Cancer Audit and the Scottish medicines Commission. Life is never dull!

I have also been involved in a small way with the Reading Lions Club who are heavily involved with organising Prostate Cancer Screening evenings, where men are invited to turn up for a PSA test. Five have been organised so far involving the testing of 4,000 men over 5 years. This has literally saved lives in men who had no idea prior to being tested that they had PCa. Last year we had nearly 2300 men turn up to be tested.

In addition to giving talks to raise awareness of PCa, I also am often asked to speak to Support Groups and obviously the subject matter has to be different. The 3 most common subjects I am asked to tak about are:

1.Incontinence related to prostate cancer
2.Erectile dysfunction
(I can talk from very personal experience from both as well as talking more generally about causes and treatment.

3.A talk about what has changed in the management and treatment of prostate cancer since I was treated 12 years ago.
(By today’s standards I have probably been grossly overtreated. Diagnosis and treatment methods have improved greatly. What has changed? What is new? What will be happening in the future?)

My continued contact with patients has allowed me to gain great experience of the very wide spectrum that is prostate cancer. The involvement with NICE and the pharma industry has also ensured I keep myself up to date.

Just as a 'bonus' I am also a retired doctor. As a Consultant Anaesthetist working at the Royal Berks Hospital for 30 years I spent a great deal of my time working with the Urology Dept as one of their main anaesthetists and thus have gained a fair bit of collateral knowledge about things as well as having experienced PCa myself.

However,this does not mean that, being a doctor, I looked after myself well. Indeed, far from it – I ignored my symptoms for nearly 2 years!!

The talk itself will last around 35 -40 mins normally. I am more than happy to answer questions.

I now have good experience of working with various technologies for on- line presentations – Zoom, Microsoft Teams etc. The ‘share screen’ facility makes this very easy and in some ways the quality of image people see can often be better than a live image projected by an old

projector with a dodgy bulb in bright ambient lighting (and sometimes with someone’s head in the way!

Covid has certainly widened one’s horizons!

Steve Allen

Home tel: 0118-926-6747
Mobile: 0780-956-387
View Presentation Videos:
“What has changed 10 years on from my diagnosis, and treatment pathways" & "PCaSo - Erectile Disfuntion"