Men Must Take Responsibility For Their Health
CANSA head of service, Gerda Strauss, said men must also take charge of their health.
We know that cancer has a strong tendency of running in families, so we urge men with a family history of cancer to not only take responsibility for their health, by going for prostate screening but also encourage other male relatives and friends to get checked, said Strauss.
According to CANSA, prostate cancer is detectable with a Prostate Specific Antigen blood test. PSA is a normal enzyme produced by the glandular tissue of the prostate and it is always present in the blood, however, a reading of three or higher may indicate inflammation of the prostate or even cancer.
A Biopsy Is Done To Diagnose Prostate Cancer And Find Out The Grade Of The Cancer
A transrectal biopsy is used to diagnose prostate cancer. A transrectal biopsy is the removal of tissue from the prostate by inserting a thin needle through the rectum and into the prostate. This procedure may be done using transrectal ultrasound or transrectal MRI to help guide where samples of tissue are taken from. A pathologist views the tissue under a microscope to look for cancer cells.
Sometimes a biopsy is done using a sample of tissue that was removed during a transurethral resection of the prostate to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia.
If cancer is found, the pathologist will give the cancer a grade. The grade of the cancer describes how abnormal the cancer cells look under a microscope and how quickly the cancer is likely to grow and spread. The grade of the cancer is called the Gleason score.
To give the cancer a grade, the pathologist checks the prostate tissue samples to see how much the tumor tissue is like the normal prostate tissue and to find the two main cell patterns. The primary pattern describes the most common tissue pattern, and the secondary pattern describes the next most common pattern. Each pattern is given a grade from 3 to 5, with grade 3 looking the most like normal prostate tissue and grade 5 looking the most abnormal. The two grades are then added to get a Gleason score.
Research Into Prostate Cancer
Early detection and better treatment have improved survival for people with prostate cancer. The research is ongoing. The Cancer Research UK website has information about research into prostate cancer.
Clinical trials can test the effectiveness of promising new treatments or new ways of combining cancer treatments. Always discuss treatment options with your doctor.
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Coffee May Help You Prevent Prostate Cancer Finds A New Study Here Are Some Home Remedies You Can Rely On To Reduce Your Risk Of This Cancer
Written by Editorial Team | Published : March 22, 2019 9:12 PM IST
Apart from being the morning energy booster, coffee can also help inhibit prostate cancer, says a new study published in the journal The Prostate. Researchers of the study at the Kanazawa University in Japan have found that two coffee compounds, namely kahweol acetate and cafestol, can potentially combat drug resistant prostate cancer. Known to be the most common cancer among men, prostate cancer affects the prostate gland, found in the pelvis below the bladder and in front of the rectum. It produces seminal fluid and also plays a significant role in urine control.
Though, there is no perfect prevention mechanism for prostate cancer, various studies in the field suggest that a diet rich in antioxidants like green tea, tomatoes, or pomegranates can help delay occurrence of the disease. Also, essential oils and yoga, together with other lifestyle changes can reduce your risk of prostate cancer. If you fall in the high-risk group for prostrate cancer, here are the home remedies that can protect you.
Help Getting Through Cancer Treatment
People with cancer need support and information, no matter what stage of illness they may be in. Knowing all of your options and finding the resources you need will help you make informed decisions about your care.
Whether you are thinking about treatment, getting treatment, or not being treated at all, you can still get supportive care to help with pain or other symptoms. Communicating with your cancer care team is important so you understand your diagnosis, what treatment is recommended, and ways to maintain or improve your quality of life.
Different types of programs and support services may be helpful, and can be an important part of your care. These might include nursing or social work services, financial aid, nutritional advice, rehab, or spiritual help.
The American Cancer Society also has programs and services including rides to treatment, lodging, and more to help you get through treatment. Call our National Cancer Information Center at 1-800-227-2345 and speak with one of our trained specialists.
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Treatments For Prostate Cancer
If you have prostate cancer, your healthcare team willcreate a treatment plan just for you. It will be based on your health andspecific information about the cancer. When deciding which treatments to offerfor prostate cancer, your healthcare team will consider:
- the type and stage of the cancer
- the grade or Gleason score
- prostate-specific antigen levels
- the risk group
- possible side effects of treatments
- your personal preferences
- your overall healthand any existing medical conditions
- your age and life expectancy
- whether you have symptoms
Prostate cancer treatments can seriously affect your qualityof life and cause side effects such as erectile dysfunction and incontinence . Manyprostate cancers grow slowly and cause no symptoms or problems.
Overview Of Treatment Options
Your treatment options will depend in part on whether your disease is localized, high risk, recurrent or advanced.
For nearly eight in 10 men with prostate cancer, the disease is diagnosed early, in the local or regional stages. Most will be cured. Active surveillance, watchful waiting, radiation therapy and surgery are the most common treatments.
Two in 10 men with prostate cancer are diagnosed with high-risk disease â localized prostate cancer that has a tendency to spread. Among these men, three or four in 10 will have cancer that comes back after treatment.
Doctors use hormone therapy, along with surgery and radiation therapy, to treat prostate cancers that might have spread. Learn more about the special considerations for treating high-risk or recurrent prostate cancer.
If your cancer has already spread when you are diagnosed , new treatments may put your cancer in remission and give you a good quality of life for years, even though the cancer canât be cured.
SCCA offers immunotherapy, hormone therapy, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and access to promising therapies in clinical studies that your community doctor may not know about.
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The Grade Group And Psa Level Are Used To Stage Prostate Cancer
The stage of the cancer is based on the results of the staging and diagnostic tests, including the prostate-specific antigen test and the Grade Group. The tissue samples removed during the biopsy are used to find out the Gleason score. The Gleason score ranges from 2 to 10 and describes how different the cancer cells look from normal cells under a microscope and how likely it is that the tumor will spread. The lower the number, the more cancer cells look like normal cells and are likely to grow and spread slowly.
The Grade Group depends on the Gleason score. See the General Information section for more information about the Gleason score.
- Grade Group 1 is a Gleason score of 6 or less.
- Grade Group 2 or 3 is a Gleason score of 7.
- Grade Group 4 is a Gleason score 8.
- Grade Group 5 is a Gleason score of 9 or 10.
The PSA test measures the level of PSA in the blood. PSA is a substance made by the prostate that may be found in an increased amount in the blood of men who have prostate cancer.
Seven Types Of Standard Treatment Are Used:
Watchful waiting or active surveillance
Watchful waiting and active surveillance are treatments used for older men who do not have signs or symptoms or have other medical conditions and for men whose prostate cancer is found during a screening test.
Watchful waiting is closely monitoring a patients condition without giving any treatment until signs or symptoms appear or change. Treatment is given to relieve symptoms and improve quality of life.
Active surveillance is closely following a patient’s condition without giving any treatment unless there are changes in test results. It is used to find early signs that the condition is getting worse. In active surveillance, patients are given certain exams and tests, including digital rectal exam, PSA test, transrectal ultrasound, and transrectal needle biopsy, to check if the cancer is growing. When the cancer begins to grow, treatment is given to cure the cancer.
Other terms that are used to describe not giving treatment to cure prostate cancer right after diagnosis are observation, watch and wait, and expectant management.
Surgery
Patients in good health whose tumor is in the prostategland only may be treated with surgery to remove the tumor. The following types of surgery are used:
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Diagnosis Of Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer is diagnosed using a number of tests, which may include:
- Prostate-specific antigen test the prostate makes a protein called PSA. Large quantities of PSA in the blood can indicate prostate cancer or other prostate problems.
- Digital rectal examination using a gloved finger in the rectum, the doctor feels for enlargement and irregularities of the prostate.
- Biopsy six to 12 tissue samples are taken from the prostate and examined in a laboratory for the presence of cancer cells.
If prostate cancer is diagnosed, more tests may be needed to see if the cancer has spread to other areas of the body. These may include computed tomography scans, magnetic resonance imaging scans and bone scans.
Test results can take a few days to come back. It is very natural to feel anxious while waiting to get your results. It can help to talk to a close friend or relative about how you are feeling. You can also contact the Cancer Council Helpline on 13 11 20 and speak with a cancer nurse.
Screening For Prostate Cancer
Screening for prostate cancer is controversial. A routine blood test which shows a high PSA may indicate that you have prostate cancer. However, there are other causes of a high PSA. Also, many prostate cancers are slow-growing and do not cause problems, particularly in older men. Some experts believe that if all men were screened then there may be many men found with a raised PSA level. Many men may then be investigated and treated unnecessarily with all the possible risks and side-effects of the investigations and treatment. Put simply, some people believe that screening for all men may do more harm than good.
Currently there is no national screening programme in the UK. However, you can decide for yourself if you would like a PSA test. It is best to discuss the pros and cons of the test with your GP. After counselling, if you decide that you would like the test, many GPs will do the test on request. See the separate leaflet called Prostate Specific Antigen Test for more details.
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If Treatment Does Not Work
Recovery from cancer is not always possible. If the cancer cannot be cured or controlled, the disease may be called advanced or terminal.
This diagnosis is stressful, and for many people, advanced cancer may be difficult to discuss. However, it is important to have open and honest conversations with your health care team to express your feelings, preferences, and concerns. The health care team has special skills, experience, and knowledge to support patients and their families and is there to help. Making sure a person is physically comfortable, free from pain, and emotionally supported is extremely important.
People who have advanced cancer and who are expected to live less than 6 months may want to consider hospice care. Hospice care is designed to provide the best possible quality of life for people who are near the end of life. You and your family are encouraged to talk with the health care team about hospice care options, which include hospice care at home, a special hospice center, or other health care locations. Nursing care and special equipment, including a hospital bed, can make staying at home a workable option for many families. Learn more about advanced cancer care planning.
After the death of a loved one, many people need support to help them cope with the loss. Learn more about grief and loss.
Where To Get Help
- helps people affected by cancer find the information, resources and support services they may need following a diagnosis of cancer.
- Diagnosing prostate cancer, 2010, Cancer Council Victoria. More information here.
- Mr PHIP , 2009, Lions Australian Prostate Cancer Website. More information here.
- Active surveillance of early prostate cancer, National Cancer Research Institute, UK. More information here.
- Parker, C, 2004 ‘Active surveillance: towards a new paradigm in the management of early prostate cancer’. Lancet Oncology, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 101106. More information here.
- Hormone therapy, Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia. More information here.
- Thursfield V 2011, Cancer in Victoria, statistics and trends, Cancer Council Victoria.More information here.
- National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines.More information here.
- Dahabreh IJ, Chung M, Balk EM, et al. 2012, Active surveillance in men with localized prostate cancer: a systematic review, Ann Intern Med, vol. 156, p. 582. More information here.
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Cancer May Spread From Where It Began To Other Parts Of The Body
When cancer spreads to another part of the body, it is called metastasis. Cancer cells break away from where they began and travel through the lymph system or blood.
- Lymph system. The cancer gets into the lymph system, travels through the lymph vessels, and forms a tumor in another part of the body.
- Blood. The cancer gets into the blood, travels through the blood vessels, and forms a tumor in another part of the body.
The metastatic tumor is the same type of cancer as the primary tumor. For example, if prostate cancer spreads to the bone, the cancer cells in the bone are actually prostate cancer cells. The disease is metastatic prostate cancer, not bone cancer.
Denosumab, a monoclonal antibody, may be used to preventbone metastases.
Prostate Cancer And Sexual Health
A prostate cancer diagnosis can leave you feeling anxious, frustrated, and depressed.
It may also leave you wondering about your ability to have sex. You may also be questioning how prostate cancer treatment can affect your sex life.
Prostate cancer rarely causes problems with sex, but the treatments for prostate cancer often affect penile function and reproduction.
Prostate surgery and radiation are the two most common treatments for prostate cancer. Both of these can affect the nerves in your penis and could cause sexual problems like erectile dysfunction .
Cryotherapy and ultrasound therapy can also cause ED. Your doctor may recommend hormone therapy or radiation therapy, as well. This therapy can lower your sex drive.
Radical prostatectomy is the most effective nerve-sparing surgery for prostate cancer. It can substantially limit the duration of post-surgical ED but requires a surgeon to be highly skilled and trained in the process.
In this type of procedure, the surgeon takes care not to damage the erectile nerves that surround the prostate as it is removed.
However, if cancer has infiltrated these nerves, it may not be possible to save them.
Preventing injury to these nerves dramatically improves the chances of a man recovering erectile function within two years of the surgery.
In addition to ED, you may also find that your orgasms are different after undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
They may not feel as strong, and you will not see as much ejaculate.
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Considering Complementary And Alternative Methods
You may hear about alternative or complementary methods that your doctor hasnt mentioned to treat your cancer or relieve symptoms. These methods can include vitamins, herbs, and special diets, or other methods such as acupuncture or massage, to name a few.
Complementary methods refer to treatments that are used along with your regular medical care. Alternative treatments are used instead of a doctors medical treatment. Although some of these methods might be helpful in relieving symptoms or helping you feel better, many have not been proven to work. Some might even be harmful.
Be sure to talk to your cancer care team about any method you are thinking about using. They can help you learn what is known about the method, which can help you make an informed decision.
The Metabolic Process That Drives Prostate Cancer
This recent study used cutting-edge technologies to analyze the metabolism of prostate cancer cells and identified a weakness in prostate tumors that could be the key to destroying them.
The researchers zeroed in on a particular protein known as 6PGD that helps prostate cancer cells shift their metabolism to defend themselves against a hormonal therapy used to treat the disease. They found that switching on 6PGD enables the cells to use glucose to generate antioxidants and make the building blocks needed for them to grow.
We think this is a significant finding because it potentially represents a new mechanism by which prostate cancer cells can become resistant to hormonal therapies, which are the standard-of-care treatment for men with advanced and metastatic disease, says Luke Selth, an associate professor at Flinders University.
Professor Lisa Butler from the University of Adelaide, co-senior author of the study, says the results represent a step forward in understanding the unique metabolism of prostate tumors. According to the study results, inhibiting 6PGD could kill cancer cells in real tumors taken directly from cancer patients as well as those grown in lab dishes.
Whats more, these inhibitors were more effective when combined with hormonal prostate cancer therapy. Since these types of drugs often dont cure cancer, researchers are keen to identify combination therapies that improve patient outcomes.
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