Surgery For Prostate Cancer
There are many types of surgery for prostate cancer. Some are done to try to cure the cancer others are done to control the cancer or make symptoms better. Talk to the doctor about the kind of surgery planned and what you can expect.
Side effects of surgery
Any type of surgery can have risks and side effects. Be sure to ask the doctor what you can expect. If you have problems, let your doctors know so they can help you.
How Is Prostate Cancer Treated
Treatment options for prostate cancer depend on several factors:
- whether the cancer is high risk
- the stage of the cancer whether it is only found in the prostate or has it spread to elsewhere in the body?
- the PSA level and how fast it might be changing
- age and general health
Your doctor will recommend one or more of the following options if you have prostate cancer:
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The purpose of the Southern Cross Medical Library is to provide information of a general nature to help you better understand certain medical conditions. Always seek specific medical advice for treatment appropriate to you. This information is not intended to relate specifically to insurance or healthcare services provided by Southern Cross. For more articles go to the Medical Library index page.
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What Will Happen After Treatment
Youll be glad when treatment is over. But its hard not to worry about cancer coming back. When cancer comes back it is called a recurrence. Even when cancer never comes back, people still worry about it. For years after treatment ends, you will see your cancer doctor. At first, your visits may be every few months. Then, the longer youre cancer-free, the less often the visits are needed.
Be sure to go to all follow-up visits. Your doctors will ask about your symptoms, examine you, and might order blood tests and maybe other tests to see if the cancer has come back.
Having cancer and dealing with treatment can be hard, but it can also be a time to look at your life in new ways. You might be thinking about how to improve your health. Call us at 1-800-227-2345 or talk to your doctor to find out what you can do to feel better.
You cant change the fact that you have cancer. What you can change is how you live the rest of your life, making healthy choices and feeling as good as you can.
What Are Prostate Cancer Treatment Side Effects
Some prostate cancer treatments can affect the bladder, erectile nerves and sphincter muscle, which controls urination. Potential problems include:
- Incontinence: Some men experience urinary incontinence. You may leak urine when you cough or laugh, or you may feel an urgent need to use the bathroom even when your bladder isnt full. This problem can improve over the first six to 12 months without treatment.
- Erectile dysfunction : Surgery, radiation and other treatments can damage the erectile nerves and affect your ability to get or maintain an erection. Some men regain erectile function within a year or two . In the meantime, medications like sildenafil or tadalafil can help by increasing blood flow to the penis.
- Infertility: Treatments can affect your ability to produce or ejaculate sperm, resulting in male infertility. If you think you might want children in the future, you can preserve sperm in a sperm bank before you start treatments. After treatments, you may undergo sperm extraction. This procedure involves removing sperm directly from testicular tissue and implanting it into a womans uterus.
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How To Prevent The Most Common And Potentially Life
When I began researching my medical condition, I knew that there was a lot of misinformation and misinformation about the use of soya in the workplace.
As a result, I decided to write this article to help dispel some of that misinformation and help those who are considering using SOFA products to be educated about their side effects.
In this article, I will share the facts behind SOFAs benefits and provide you with a simple way to make your SOFA product purchase as safe and effective as possible.
The truth about SOFA and SOFA-free products in the US and worldwide When I first started researching my condition, there were several articles and articles that were written that focused on the SOFA issue.
I found that many of these articles were based on what I believed were false assumptions and assumptions that were based purely on anecdotal evidence.
As I began to explore my condition further, I began looking into more information on SOFA, and I started to learn more about the different types of SOFAs that were available to me.
While Im not going to share all the facts, I am going to offer you a quick look at the various types of products and how they work.
The main ingredients in SOFA So, lets begin with the main ingredients of SO FA products.
Soy Protein is one of the most widely used products in American food and pharmaceutical manufacturing.
In the US, soy protein is made from the beans of the soybean plant, and its one of several types of soy protein.
Risks And Causes Of Prostate Cancer
The cause of the majority of prostate cancers is unknown. However, the risk of developing prostate cancer may be slightly increased with the following:
Increasing age Prostate cancer is quite rare in men under 50.
Family history If your father or brother is diagnosed with prostate cancer you are two to three times more likely to get prostate cancer yourself. If they had it at a young age your risk is greater still.
*Genetics Men who carry a faulty BRCA2 gene are at higher risk of developing prostate cancer. To learn more about the BRCA gene in men, click here.
Diet the Western diet, which is rich in fats and low in fibre, may increase risk.
Race African-American and African-Caribbean men are more at risk than other ethnic groups.
Click here for more information about risks factors and causes of prostate cancer.
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Diagnostic Advances In Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer diagnosis is followed by staging of the cancer. If theres no evidence of metastasis of the original prostate tumor, meaning the cancer hasnt spread to other parts of the body, your cancer will also be assigned to a risk stratification group, also known as a risk group. The risk group attempts to predict the likelihood that the disease has spread microscopically outside the prostate. We informally refer to three risk groups: low risk, intermediate risk and high risk, although as many as six different groups exist.
The specific stage and/or risk stratification of your cancer may determine your treatment options. In general:
Depending on your specific diagnosis, you may have two or more good treatment choices that have similar outcomes, and you probably have time to investigate those options.
Recent areas of advancement in oncology may provide a more accurate picture of your specific diagnosis, directing you and your doctor to more appropriate treatment options. Two specific developments include prostate-specific PET scan agents that may allow us to get more accurate imaging than we could before and the results of advanced genomic testing, which may help identify more aggressive cancers that are less suitable for active surveillance.
Treatments May Have Side Effects
The treatment options for early-stage prostate cancer fall into three broad categories: surgery, radiation therapy, and active surveillance. Your doctor will make a treatment recommendation based on your numbers as well as a mathematical tool known as a nomogram, which can help you and your doctor better assess how extensive your cancer is likely to be and whether it is likely to become active in the future.
Yet clinical studies have not provided any evidence that one treatment is better than another or that any treatment at all actually prolongs life: The average 5-, 10-, and 15-year survival rates are virtually the same for all treatment options in early-stage prostate cancer, including active surveillance. Its also important to understand that no mathematical model is foolproof, and some men diagnosed with early-stage, locally confined disease will later find out that their cancer was more extensive than originally believed.
If you are diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer, you have a number of treatments to choose from. A brief comparison is listed in Table 2.
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What Does The Prostate Do
The prostate is a male gland that releases prostate fluid, one of the components of semen.
The muscles of the prostate gland help propel this fluid into the urethra during ejaculation.
It is a muscular gland that is often described as walnut or small apricot-sized.
An enlarged prostate can be a sign of prostate cancer, the third biggest cancer killer.
The Symptom Overlap From An Enlarged Prostate And Prostate Cancer Are Nearly Identical As Far As Urine
Prostate cancer can masquerade as a benign enlarged prostate if the malignancy is still localized rather than spread.
First of all, the majority of patients who are diagnosed with prostate cancer have absolutely no symptoms, says Michael D. Lutz, MD, board certified urologist Partner at Michigan Institute of Urology President, MIU Mens Health Foundation.
The typical prostate cancer is diagnosed by the judicious use of the serum prostatic specific antigen blood test, continues Dr. Lutz.
Based upon this blood test result and a digital rectal examination, additional tests to confirm the diagnosis would be considered.
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How To Spot Prostate Cancer Early
There are two types of screening that your doctor may recommend: the first requires blood collection to measure the level of the prostate-specific antigen PSA. Higher levels often indicate the presence of prostate cancer.
The second test is a physical examination in which a doctor puts on gloves, lubricates the finger and inserts it into the rectum to see if the prostate is enlarged. If any of the results indicate the possibility of prostate cancer, your doctor will recommend further tests.
Early-stage prostate cancer typically does not have any physical signs or symptoms, said Dr. Salim Cheriyan, a urologist with Baylor St. Lukes Medical Group. This is why discussing the risks and benefits of screening with your physician is an important part of detecting prostate cancer.
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What Are The Signs Of Prostate Cancer
Most early prostate cancers are detected with PSA tests or digital rectal exams before they cause any symptoms. However, more advanced prostate cancers can cause a variety of symptoms including:
- Trouble starting to urinate .
- Urinating much more often than usual.
- The feeling that you can’t release all of your urine.
- Pain with urination or ejaculation.
- Blood in your urine or semen.
- Impotence/erectile dysfunction.
- Numbness in the lower extremities.
- Loss of bladder or bowel control.
All of these symptoms can be caused by things other than prostate cancer, so experiencing them doesn’t necessarily mean you have prostate cancer. When older men have problems urinating, it is usually caused by a problem called benign prostatic hyperplasia , which is not prostate cancer. If you have any of these symptoms, you need to see your provider for testing.
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What Happens When Prostate Cancer Is Left Untreated
Doru Paul, MD, is triple board-certified in medical oncology, hematology, and internal medicine. He is an associate professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and attending physician in the Department of Hematology and Oncology at the New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center.
While most men undergo some form of treatment for their prostate cancer, some men today choose to not be treated for their prostate cancer. Instead, they may choose to have their doctors monitor their cancer.
Known as active surveillance, it is common when the cancer is expected to grow slowly based on biopsy results, confined to the prostate, not causing any symptoms, and/or small. In active surveillance, doctors will initiate cancer treatment only if cancer starts growing.
Others men may choose to not undergo cancer treatment because of a short life expectancy or other serious medical problems. They may feel that the risks or side effects of cancer treatment outweigh their potential benefits.
This option is certainly OK and reasonable in the right circumstancesrequiring a careful and thoughtful discussion with your doctor and family.
Treatment Of Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy Bph
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Q: What Symptoms Do I Have To See A Doctor
Answer: If prostate cancer is detected relatively late, the PSA will exceed 20 or more than one hundred to one thousand, and the body may lose 20 pounds. So at this time, it is best to go to the internal medicine department to get a PSA.Older men have larger prostates. The biggest problem is that when urinating, the urine cant come out, so they must go to the hospital.
If there is bleeding during urination, pay special attention. If men over the age of 50 have blood in their urine, the first possibility is prostate cancer, bladder cancer or kidney stones, so an x-ray examination should be done, and a cystoscopy should also be done.
When the prostate is enlarged, there will be some problems with urination or incomplete urination. At this time, you should see a urologist, because there are some medicines that can make urination easier, or some medicines can make the prostate smaller. a little. If you cant bear to see a doctor, if it affects the kidneys, it will be a big problem.
What Makes Prostate Cancer Become Aggressive Study Investigates
They suggest that the finding could help predict disease aggressiveness, improve personalized treatments, and open the door to precision medicine for advanced prostate cancer.
In a study paper now published in the journal Cell, they describe how they investigated a genomic variant known to be linked to aggressive prostate cancer.
Using state-of-the-art tools, they confirmed the link in a large group of people with prostate cancer.
They also identified how the variant influences a genetic circuit involving three genes that could potentially drive the disease to an incurable stage.
The genomic variant is a difference in a DNA building block located in chromosome 19q13 that is known as the single nucleotide polymorphism rs11672691.
Previous studies had already linked this particular variant to aggressive prostate cancer. But they did not explain how the link worked.
Comparing the order in which millions of DNA building blocks occur in the human genomes of any two individuals would reveal hardly any differences. But where they do occur, these differences or variants can give rise to disease.
How human genomic variants, says senior study author Gong-Hong Wei, a professor in the Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at the University of Oulu in Finland, cause disease and its progression is in general one of the most compelling puzzles and questions in medicine.
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Living With Prostate Cancer
Receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer can be alarming studies show that the risk of suicide and cardiovascular disease goes up in the week after someone is told they have prostate cancer.
If you feel anxious, frustrated or upset about how prostate cancer may be affecting your life, talk with your doctor, partner or friend and get support.
How Prostate Cancer Develops
However, sometimes something goes wrong within prostate cells, and cancer develops.
In general, cancer is a condition in which a normal cell becomes abnormal and starts to grow and/or reproduce uncontrollably without having the signals or brakes that stop typical cell growth. Prostate cancer occurs when a normal prostate cell begins to grow out of control. In many cases, prostate cancer is a slow-growing cancer that does not spread beyond the prostate gland before the time of diagnosis.
Once prostate cancer forms, it feeds on androgens and uses them as fuel for growth. This is why one of the backbones of treatment for men, especially with advanced prostate cancer, is to lower a mans androgen levels with drugs collectively termed hormone therapy.
Not all prostate cancer cells are alike. Prostate cancers that are composed of very abnormal cells are much more likely to both divide quickly and spread, or metastasize, from the prostate to other regions of the body. Often, prostate cancer spreads first to tissues that are near the prostate, including the seminal vesicles and nearby lymph nodes.
Researchers have identified various biological and genetic subtypes of prostate cancer. Although these subtypes are typically not yet used to guide treatment recommendations, they are the subject of active research funded by the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
Help support PCFs research into causes and treatments of prostate cancer: Donate Today!
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