Understanding Prostate Cancer: Diagnosis and Stages

Being told that you have prostate cancer can be a frightening experience. When you are told of your condition, it's common to be so overwhelmed that you neglect to ask important questions, only to think of them once you've gotten home. Understanding your illness is often the first step on the road to recovery. Here's what you need to know about your diagnosis and how the cancer is staged:

1.Diagnosing Stages

Once a man has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his physician will perform one or more additional tests to determine the stage of cancer. These tests may include a digital rectal examination, a blood test, an MRI of the prostate or skeleton, a CT of the pelvis and abdomen, or a surgical procedure to examine lymph nodes. While not all men will need each test, most men will undergo at least one of these tests in order for their physician to better stage the cancer.

2.Stage I

If you are diagnosed with stage I prostate cancer, this means that your cancer is microscopic and only located in the prostate. Your cancer will not be large enough for your doctor to manipulate digitally. Additionally, the cancer will not be able to be detected on any digital imaging of the prostate gland. Stage I cancer of the prostate will be discovered by a needle biopsy or in tissue that is removed during other surgical procedures.

3.Stage II

In stage II prostate cancer, the cancer is still located solely in the prostate. The cancer may be found in one-half or less of one lobe of the prostate, in more than one-half of one lobe or in opposite sides of the prostate gland. As in stage I prostate cancer, stage II cancers cannot be felt during digital rectal exams, nor will the cancer be visible on any type of imaging.

4.Stage III

In stage III prostate cancer, the cancer has spread outside of the prostate to nearby tissues. The prostate specific antigen, or PSA, score can be at any level and the Gleason score will range between two and ten. Your doctor may choose to treat you with external-beam radiation therapy, hormone therapy or suggest you for a clinical trial of new therapies. Alternatively, your doctor may suggest no treatment at all and, instead, adopt a watch and see approach to your cancer.

5.Stage IV

When your prostate cancer has metastasized, or spread, to other areas of your body, you are diagnosed with stage IV cancer. Your cancer may be found in your bones, liver, lungs or lymph nodes. Stage IV prostate cancer, like other cancers that have reached the fourth stage, is considered to be the most serious. Without immediate treatment, this type of cancer will likely prove fatal. Your doctor may prescribe chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormone therapy or a radical prostatectomy combined with other therapies.

The better you understand your diagnosis and the stage of prostate cancer that has been discovered, the better equipped you will be to partner with your oncologist to aggressively tackle your disease. If you have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, do not hesitate to approach your doctor with any questions that you may have. Your gained knowledge may just save your life.

John Martin writes articles for several health testing sites and recommends having your prostate test in Dallas Tx done at one of these centers.

Symptoms of Prostate Cancer

In early stage of Prostate Cancer, there's no special clinical manifestation, whereas as time goes by, Prostate Cancer shall manifest several varieties of symptoms and these symptoms would exacerbate step by step. To sum up, there area unit in the main 3 aspects as follows:

Symptoms of Prostate Cancer

Urination obstruction: as a result of the tumor's volume will increase step by step therefore on squeeze duct, therefore patients with Prostate Cancercan suffer from more and more getting-worse symptoms like upset, frequent voiding or voiding urgency, or different stimulation symptoms like odynuria. a part of advanced stage Prostate Cancer patients would suffer from retention as a result of they're utterly unable to urinate.

Other tissues to be concerned in: once Prostate Cancer invades adjacent or encircled tissues or organs, a series of native infiltration symptoms shall be caused, for instance, neoplasm offensive nerve and cavitas pelvis would cause pain in lower abdomen likewise as in area or perhaps in male reproductive gland, or bearing-down pain in pocket or lumgago; neoplasm offensive vesica, vesicle, would cause these symptoms like bloody voiding, hemospemia; neoplasm offensive canal would cause hydronephrosis; if duct is invaded, corresponding symptoms like piddle retention or enuresis then on area unit caused.

Tumor metastasis: it's simple for Prostate Cancer to unfold to skeleton, before skeleton being destroyed, Prostate Cancer patients shall suffer from nice pain, and meantime bear the additional risk of bone fracture. If bone marrow is broken, the immunity degrade or anaemia would appear; neoplasm spreading to blood vessels or lymph gland close, circulation of blood or humor fluid would be blocked or blocked so the limbs or area of patients shall suffer from edema; neoplasm spreading to respiratory organ, would cause hurting, pulmonic infection, respiration problem, ejection blood then on; neoplasm spreading to liver, would cause discomforts to liver space, jaundice then on; neoplasm spreading to brain, would cause headache, dizziness, vomiting, cognitive state then on; advanced stage Prostate Cancer patients could suffer from serosa fluid, ascites, swollen everywhere the body then on.

Fat men die of prostate cancer

Adipose tissue surrounding the prostate gland of men with obesity, creates favorable conditions for the progression of prostate cancer.

What is the prostate gland
The prostate gland - is musculo-glandular organ located below the bladder and surrounding the initial portion of the urethra. The main function of the prostate is to produce secretions, which is part of semen. Ducts of the prostate glands open into the urethra.

Prostate cancer
In the early stages of prostate cancer does not manifest itself. Complaints are associated with tumor spread and metastasis. At the stage the only manifestation of the lack of symptoms, allowing the disease to suspect, is to increase blood levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA). As prevention of prostate cancer for all men should conduct an annual PSA test beginning at age 45.

By increasing the size of the tumor shows the following symptoms:

• Frequent urination
• Difficulty urinating
• Urinary incontinence
• urge to urinate.

The essence of the study

Scientists have received samples of adipose tissue surrounding the prostate gland in men with benign prostatic hyperplasia, prostate cancer and prostate cancer. Regardless of prostate disease in men with obesity , there is increased activity of genes in fat cells. These genes encode proteins involved in the immune response, inflammation, growth, reproduction, and cell death.

Increase in the activity of genes leads to inhibition of the immune response and stimulates the formation of new blood vessels, which creates favorable conditions for the progression of prostate cancer. The study's authors hope that the findings will more carefully selected treatments for patients with obesity.

Federal panel says PSA screening for prostate cancer does more harm than good, but no better test is available

Prostate cancer cells. Getty Images photo by Abbey Michael.

An influential federal panel says testing healthy men's prostate-specific antigen levels to detect prostate cancer does more harm than good.

The PSA test can lead to unnecessary biopsies for men who turn out to be cancer-free. Those biopsies can also lead to men being treated for cancers that are so slow-growing (a characteristic of most prostate cancers) that they didn't need to be detected.

An estimated 1,000 to 1,300 men die annually from complications associated with treatments that are initiated because of PSA screening, reports Alice Park for Time magazine. Moreover, treating harmless prostate tumors increases the chances of making men impotent or incontinent.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force published the recommendation in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In 2009, the panel also recommended that women delay routine mammograms until the age of 50. That was controversial, and "The task force's recommendation goes against two decades of widespread use of the PSA test, a $35 blood test," Park reports.

"The recommendation is not just counter to what the lay public has been taught about cancer prevention but what physicians have been taught as well," said Dr. Michael LeFevre, co-vice chair of the USPSTF and a professor of family and community medicine at University of Missouri. "We've been told for decades to be afraid of cancer and that the only hope is early detection and treatment. So it's hard for physicians and patients alike to accept that not all cancers need to be detected or need to be treated and that there are harms associated with screening, not just benefits."

Through PSA testing, physicians "were finding the cancer earlier, so the time from diagnosis to death was longer, but the patient wasn't actually living longer," explained Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

But there isn't a better test to replace the PSA, and Ian Thompson, chairman of urology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, said to reject it completely is unwise. He said U.S. death rates from prostate cancer dropped between 30 and 50 percent since the screening became commonplace in the early 1990s, though those numbers could also have been influenced by more effective treatments. Thompson said he didn't want to go back to the "bad old days" when doctors only found prostate cancer when it was already unable to be cured, reports Liz Szabo for USA Today.  (Read more)

Study finds new prostate-cancer test is better than current one

Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles say they have developed a new test for prostate cancer that is "more sensitive and more specific" than the usual test for prostate-specific antigen, the UCLA Health System says in a news release on a new, peer-reviewed study.

"The conventional PSA test for prostate cancer has been used for nearly 30 years and is not specific enough in delineating between malignancies and non-malignant diseases of the prostate, such as benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), an enlarging of the prostate common in aging men that increases PSA levels," the release said, citing urology professor Gang Zeng, senior author of the study, published in the May issue of the Journal of Translational Medicine.

The new test "measures levels of PSA as well as six specific antibodies found in the blood of men with the disease," the release says. "The test, called the A+PSA assay, also reduced the rate of false-positives, tests that indicate the presence of cancer when no disease is actually present." For more from Newswise, click here.