All About Prostate Cancer

Does prostate cancer have symptoms? In this health video minute on prostate cancer, Dr. Schlegel (Department Chairman) of Cornell Urology discusses the symptoms that more often lead men to their doctors (urology/prostate cancer) for thorough examination including a PSA test –the current test in detecting the probability of prostate cancer in men. Detecting prostate cancer is both difficult and unique.

Source: An Original HealthTheater.tv Production/In ociation with the Dept. of Urology, Weill-Cornell New York Presbyterian Hospital. Credits: Executive Producer:Sean Moloney

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A patient discusses options for treating his prostate cancer.

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As prostate cancer involves the male reproductive system, the prostate, it is a disease that primarily affects the male. Early detection of its symptoms is vital to treatment and recovery. When you have prostate cancer, your prostate cells mutate and multiply out of control. These cancerous cells start to attack all the surrounding healthy cells in the prostate, and can spread to other parts of the body. Very often, this disease also affects the bones around the prostate.

Most men do not realize that they have prostate cancer until it is in an advanced stage. Once it is diagnosed in a later stage, it is usually more difficult to cure or treat. Hence, early detection can help in controlling the spread of the cancer cells. Here are some important prostate cancer symptoms that
you should keep a look out for:
– general pain in the prostate area
– an uncontrollable desire to urinate frequently, especially at nighttime
– difficulty in urinating, both in starting or holding back
– poor flow of urine
– the presence of blood and in urine and semen
– pain or burning sensation when urinating
– erectile dysfunction (inability to have or sustain an erection)
– uncomfortable or painful ejaculation
– a frequent pain or stiffness in the upper thighs, hips, or lower back

It does not mean that you have prostate cancer just because you notice the above symptoms. These symptoms can also be an indication of other diseases. Your best course of action is to go for an accurate and proper diagnosis by a doctor or specialist. You will have to undergo a series of tests in order to determine if you have prostate cancer or some other health problems.

Several factors appear to increase the risk of getting this disease.

Age is a key factor. It has been found that prostate cancer is most common in men over fifty years of age.
Family history is also another key indicator of increased risk. If you have a close male relative who is suffering from the disease, you are twice as likely to have prostate cancer yourself.

In addition, nationality or where you come from can mean different risk levels. Statistics reveal that African-Americans are most at risk, followed by Americans and Europeans. Least at risk are Asians, particularly those that live in the East and Southeast portions of the continent.

It has been said that an unhealthy lifestyle and diet also increases your risk to getting this disease. Although this disease is not preventable, making substantial changes to your diet and lifestyle have been shown to improve your chances of recovery greatly.

To find out if you really have prostate cancer, you need to consult a specialist. Once you describe to him about the symptoms that you have observed, he may order a series of tests to make sure.

The PSA, or prostate specific antigen test, is used to detect the disease. During this process, a small piece of the prostate will be removed and examined under a microscope to check for prostate cancer cells. Additionally, other tests such as X-rays and bone scans may also be used to determine the extent of the cancer.

While it appears cumbersome to go for that many tests, it is important to remember that they may actually help you save your live. You can get treated for prostate cancer symptoms if you take early action.

PROSTATE CANCER - NEW TREATMENT BY RADIOTHERAPY

Research is continuing to try and improve technology and techniques to allow radiotherapy to the prostate gland to be more effective and to have fewer side effects. One way is to reduce the amount of radiation received by normal organs (bladder, bowel etc) and this has been improving over the last few years with better machines and techniques such as “conformal radiotherapy” and “IMRT”.

Work is also being carried out on combining brachytherapy with external therapy to allow some of the benefits of brachytherapy (fewer side effects, higher overall dose to the prostate cancer) to be used for men with more advanced prostate cancer without compromising the chance of cure.

NEW HORMONE THERAPY FOR PROSTATE CANCER

Some newer prostate cancer hormone treatments have fewer side effects than older hormone based drugs. Some are also felt to be more effective. All the time researchers are testing to try and find the best hormone tablets or injections for use in prostate cancer.

Other research is going on to try and work out the best time to give hormone treatment in prostate cancer and whether it is best to combine this treatment with other types of treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Trials are currently being run to answer these questions and the results should be available in the next few years.

IMPROVEMENTS IN CHEMOTHERAPY TREATMENT FOR PROSTATE CANCER

In the past prostate cancer did not respond very well to chemotherapy drugs. However now there are newer drugs which are more powerful against prostate cancer and these have started to be used with more frequency in late prostate cancer which has already spread to other organs and which has become resistant to hormone treatments. The best drug found so far is Docetaxel, a new type of chemotherapy drug. It has several side effects including hair loss, nausea and risk of infection. Doctors are now looking to see if Docetaxel would work even better as a combination with other drugs.

USE OF BISPHOSPHONATE DRUGS FOR PROSTATE CANCER TREATMENT

These are a group of drugs which are most often used in treating osteoporosis. It has been recently found that they can also help reduce pain associated with cancer deposits or secondaries in the bones. They may also help reduce the risk of these abnormal bones from breaking or fracturing, by slowing down the damage caused to the bone by the cancer.

Research is ongoing to look at which of these drugs is the best for treating prostate cancer with bone disease and when the best time to start treatment with these drugs is.

ALTERNATIVE TO SURGERY FOR TREATMENT OF EARLY PROSTATE CANCER

There are 2 new treatments which are being researched as an alternative to surgery for some men with localised prostate cancer. Both options would not require a general anaesthetic (you would not need to be put to sleep) making them lower risk. Both treatments also have fewer side effects than radical surgery (”prostatectomy”). However neither has been in use long enough to know if it will prevent prostate cancer from coming back as effectively as standard treatments (surgery and radiotherapy).

Cryotherapy is the killing of cancer cells by freezing them. Needles are inserted into the prostate gland under local anaesthetic and liquid nitrogen is passed along them to freeze the prostate and the cancer cells within it. Currently it is being used for men whose prostate cancer has come back despite a first more conventional treatment and so is only being trialled for use as a first treatment option.

HIFU stands for high frequency ultrasound. Here ultrasound waves are directed to where there are cancer cells and are these are used to heat them up, thus killing them. In prostate cancer the ultrasound probe would be put into the back passage and from here ultrasound waves would be fired towards the prostate gland. The results so far have been good in that the treatment is safe and effective.

NEW TREATMENTS FOR PROSTATE CANCER IN VERY EARLY STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

There are a number of alternative treatments which are still at a highly experimental stage of development. Gene therapy aims to replace the faulty genes in cancer cells with good ones which would allow the cell to self destruct if it felt it had become too mutated. (Cancer cells have lost this self destruct ability and continue to grow and divide despite having many abnormalities which would normally force the cell to die.) Vaccine treatment looks at ways of making the bodies own immune system recognise and kill cancerous sells. Endothelin blockers are a new type of drug treatment which works by preventing the prostate cancer cells to grow.

Many people may have heard that Vitamin D is being used in the treatment of prostate cancer however this therapy is in the very early experimental stages and is no where near being used in clinics as a cancer treatment. Vitamin D has been reported to block receptors on prostate cancer cells thereby slowing the rate of their growth but there is NO clinical evidence that this is in fact the case. Some researchers claim that the active form of Vitamin D slows the growth of prostate cancer but as yet this has only been tested on mice and other small animals.

Beta-sitosterol is a herbal remedy that people have started to associate with prostate cancer treatment. This natural plant fat has apparently been proven effective for the treatment of an enlarged prostate but not necessarily prostate cancer. According to research Beta-sitosterol MAY help to prevent the emergence of prostate cancer but this has not been clinically proven yet.

If you have just learned that you have prostate cancer or know someone who has been diagnosed with it, you may be feeling depressed and angry. However such type of cancer can be treated and you can go on living a normal and healthy life again.

The treatment of prostate cancer can vary depending on the advancement of the disease, the patients physical state, and other factors. The first signs of Prostate cancer that someone can exhibit can be a difficulty in urinating, which occurs because the prostate gland swells up to such a large extent. This could be further divided into frequently getting up in the night to urinate, interrupted flow of urine, and no urine flow at all. There could also be blood in the urine, and a painful feeling in the hips, back and pelvis. Another symptom could present itself in painful ejaculation.

To give a prognosis for prostate cancer can also depend on if this is the first discovery of the caner or if it is a recurrence. Many different kinds of test are done to check for cancer cells. This includes a rectal examination, a probe or a less obtrusive ultra sound. Once you have been diagnosed, other tests will have to be performed to check if the cancer has spread to other areas of the body before a final diagnosis and treatment options can be given.

The severity and stage of the prostate cancer is referred to by the Gleason score, which is determined by the way the cancer tissue looks under a microscope. If the score is low it means that the tissue is normal and does not look like it will spread easily. If it is high however, then the likely hood that the cancer will spread to other areas of the body is likely.

Such type of cancer is usually found in older men and there are the usual treatments of surgery (where the lymph nodes are removed), Radiation therapy, and hormone therapy. There are also newer types of treatments for prostate cancer that are still in the clinical trial phase which include Chemotherapy, Cryosurgery, Biological therapy and a high intensity form of ultra sound.

If you have any of the above mentioned symptoms that could indicate related cancer then it would be wise to consult with your health care professional to ensure that if you do have prostate cancer it is discovered early and treated accordingly.

We know that a body that is well fortified and has been nourished with good nutrition and nutrients is much better prepared to fight off illness in diseases that may come about. It’s estimated that per capita, men in the United States are five times more likely to die from prostate cancer than men in Japan.

Epidemiolical research which is the study of disease patterns in diverse groups of people, suggests that the difference in diet plays a role in the increased rate of prostate cancer in the US. This research is suggested that both the difference in diet and lifestyle may be contributing factors to the increased cancer rate

Other research has estimated that as many as one third of all cancer deaths in the United States can easily be attributed to both our diet and lifestyle choices. Our fast food lifestyle simply doesn’t provide the adequate nutrition necessary to keep our bodies and immune systems operating at their best. But again, this is a guess based on a study of empirical data only. You cannot deny that there are definite patterns that tie our dietary nutrition to some illnesses

We know that some nutritional supplements such as saw Palmetto can help with prostatis, a swelling or hardening of the prostate gland. Daily use of saw Palmetto can relieve many of the symptoms of an enlarged prostate. This by itself may suggest that by providing additional nutritional supplements, our bodies are better able to regulate and correct developing problems.

The American Institute for Cancer Research has stated that as much as one third of all cancer related disease is preventable through a combination of nutrition changes, maintaining an active lifestyle and healthy weight control.

The study by the Cancer Research Institute was based on results of a review of over 4,500 scientific studies on cancer and dietary nutrition. It was this empirical evidence that form the basis of their claim that about one third of all cancer illness is preventable

A healthy goal to keep all cancer but especially that of the prostate at bay, should probably include

- Limiting the percentage of the dietary fat consumption to about 15-20% of total daily calories.

- Mom was right,you should eat a lot of fruits and vegetables every day.

- Keep Dietary Fiber preferably around 25-35 g every single day.

- Balance your intake of calories to your energy output. This means the key is to exercise more folks. :o)

- Add Dietary Vitamins, nutrients herbs and supplements to make certain your body has everything it needs to get and stay healthy

Conclusively, even though there is no genuine proof that this type of nutritional regimen will keep you healthy, the fact is that it definitely couldn’t hurt. You may find more energy through an active and healthy lifestyle by eating right and giving your body the nutrition it needs to stay healthy.

If you’ve been told that you have prostate cancer, then you’ve probably had The Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) Test, been physically checked and probably have already had a biopsy performed. Once all this has established your condition, your cancer is then assigned a score.

These scores determine what stage your cancer has progressed. During the biopsy, the lab will assign what’s called a Gleason score helps the doctor in determining what stage your prostate cancer is currently in. The appropriateness of any treatment is dependant on the advancement of your prostate cancer. Staging and the Gleason score will help determine which treatment program is right for you.

While a prostate cancer is considered serious, don’t forget that it’s typically very slow growing. If your cancer has progressed to the stage where intervention is necessary, a procedure known as Brachytherapy may be in order.

Simply put, radioactive material is sealed in small seeds or pellets that are placed directly around a prostate tumor. It is also called an internal radiation or implant radiation. There’s no question that this treatment program is effective and does a good job in controlling prostate cancer

Internal radiotherapy or Brachytherapy is usually the recommended prostate cancer treatment when the cancer has dangerously spread beyond the prostate gland of victims. The major benefit of this radiation treatment strategy is that it will help to spare healthy nearby tissues. This in turn will limit the side effects experienced.

This type of treatment plan is not available in all hospitals. Most larger towns and cities however have nuclear medicine options available. Given the high success rate of this prostate cancer treatment, it’s well worth your time to locate health resources that specialize in this type of program

Remember that just because you have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, it’s not a death sentence. Many people with prostate cancer have followed their doctors advice and went with a treatment known simply as watchful waiting. As the name implies, watchful waiting is a situation where no direct action is taken to treat the prostate cancer. The reason for this is to maintain the quality of life for as long as possible. Direct intervention plans such as Brachytherapy are not without their risks and side effects.

Watchful waiting may be an appropriate course of action for your prostate cancer depending on your age and other factors. Only you and your doctor can determine what treatment program is right for you.