Most men younger than 40 are rarely ever diagnosed with prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is normally a very slow growth cancer that can take many years before it becomes deadly. The most common cancer in American men, that is excluding skin cancer, is prostate cancer.
Additional symptoms that may be associated with this disease are bone pain or tenderness, and abdominal pain. One of the most common symptoms is the inability to urinate. There are several other symptoms that may not be mentioned here.
Because prostate cancer symptoms can mimic other diseases or disorders, men who experience any of these symptoms should undergo a thorough work-up to determine the underlying cause of the symptoms. Blood in the urine or semen and frequent pain or stiffness in the lower back, hips, or upper thighs are often symptoms of cancer. One prostate cancer symptom is difficulty starting urination or holding back urine.
Your doctor may use either one or two of the most common tests for prostate cancer detection. One downside to PSA testing is that health care providers are detecting and treating some very early-stage prostate cancers that may never have caused the patient any harm. There are several potential downsides to PSA testing; for example a high PSA does not always mean a patient has prostate cancer.
A chest x-ray may be done to see if there is a spread of cancer. Urine or prostatic fluid cytology may reveal unusual cells. There is a newer test called AMACR that is more sensitive than the PSA test for determining the presence of prostate cancer.
Medications can have many side effects, including hot flashes and loss of sexual desire. Some drugs with numerous side effects are being used to treat advanced prostate cancer, blocking the production of testosterone, called chemical castration; it has the same result as surgical removal of the testes. An oncology specialist will usually recommend treating with a single drug or a combination of drugs.
Other medications used for hormonal therapy, with side effects, include androgen-blocking agents, which prevent testosterone from attaching to prostate cells. In the early stages, surgery and radiation may be used to remove or attempt to kill the cancer cells or shrink the tumor. Thoroughly discuss your treatment options and concerns with your doctor and other health professionals; it never hurts to get a second or even third opinion or more if necessary.
Prostate cancer that has metastasized may be treated conventionally with drugs to reduce testosterone levels, surgery to remove the testes, chemotherapy or nothing at all. The approaches to treatment include: ever watchful waiting to see whether the cancer is growing slowly and not causing any symptoms. Many men simply want the best treatment they can get but what's important is picking the best treatment for you.
Surgery, radiation therapy, and hormonal therapy can interfere with libido on a temporary or permanent basis. Hormone manipulation is mainly used as a treatment to relieve symptoms in men whose cancer has spread. Surgery is usually only recommended after thorough evaluation and discussion of all available treatment options.
What you can do now is begin to understand what exactly your treatment options are and where you're going to begin. In patients whose health makes the risk of surgery unacceptably high, radiation therapy is often the chosen conventional alternative.
As new research comes out adjust your treatment your options accordingly. Just about all men with prostate cancer survive at least five years after their initial diagnosis, 93% survive at least 10 years, and 67% survive more than 15 years. In the end, only you with the help of your doctors, knowing your individual situation, can determine the best treatment program for you.
With such widespread diseases as prostate and various other forms of cancer, there are concerns which eventually arise about the treatments and tests for such illnesses. Because such illnesses are so prevalent in developed countries, diseases like cancers and diabetes are widely studied by research institutions all over the world in hopes that there will be better cures and quicker tests to determine if someone has the illness or not. However, by developing such treatments, preventative measures and genetic tests, people fall into the problem of what constitutes morality. For illnesses like prostate cancer, morality is on the verge of being sent to the wayside in an effort to allow high risk individuals to be tested for the prostate cancer gene long before they reach the age in which prostate cancer will spring up within their bodies.
Perhaps the biggest debate over prostate cancer morality is whether or not scientists should develop early screening tests for the illness in high risk patients. Due to the extremely high genetic correlation between those affected by prostate cancer and the probability of their children getting the disease when they are older, a genetic test would be an excellent way to help people realize if they will have prostate cancer in the future or not.
Unfortunately for the technologies which could ultimately screen for prostate cancer, morality soon enters the debate. If people find out when they are young that they will have a high risk for prostate cancer at age sixty or so, they may have a slightly traumatic experience growing up and feeling that they will die at around age sixty - especially if there is no cure for prostate cancer by that time. Furthermore, they would have difficulty finding health insurance - as no self respecting insurance agency will want to insure a person who will be catching a costly disease at age sixty. These are two major concerns from a point of prostate cancer morality.
On the opposite side of the argument, however, people who say that prostate cancer morality should take a back seat to scientific advancement proclaim the benefits of early genetic testing. People should be aware of the status of their health. If more people were to receive blood tests to determine if they are at risk for prostate cancer, they would go get more prostate exams which would in turn lower the mortality rate for prostate cancer. After all, it is pretty difficult for those who support prostate cancer morality to argue against less people dying.
The whole battle between prostate cancer morality and the necessary science to help cure people will certainly turn into a raging debate in the future. Ultimately, the outcome will determine how well we handle other emerging diseases and whether or not we will do whatever it takes to combat them.
Both Helen Hecker & Mary Murtha are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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