About prostate cancer - Prostate cancer is a disease characterized by the emergence of malignant cells (cancer) in the prostate. The prostate is a gland of the male reproductive system located below the bladder and near the rectum. It is the size of a chestnut and surrounds the urethra (the tube through which urine is evacuated from the bladder). The prostate produces a fluid that forms part of the semen.



Prostate cancer is one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers in men. In the U.S., one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime. While no one says about prostate cancer that it would be a mild illness, the good news is that due to increased awareness and screening sites, increasingly more men are diagnosed early. This means that most cancers are detected while still localized in the prostate and were not extended. If the patient needs to undergo surgery, prostate cancer and treatment after surgery have better evolutions nowadays, namely the cancer shrinks and the treatment is easier to bear.

Treatment options, prostate cancer and treatment after surgery - When prostate cancer is considered to be located, there are five treatment options:
1. remove the affected prostate cancer (radical prostatectomy)
2. irradiation of the prostate affected by external radiation or radioactive seed implantation (brachytherapy)
3. affected prostate freezing (cryotherapy)
4. hormone treatment, which has no curative effect and is done in combination with radiation therapy or cryotherapy.
5. monitoring (with supervision pending)

Surgical removal of prostate cancer - In localized prostate cancer, radical prostatectomy (removal of part of the prostate and surrounding tissue) is considered the definitive method of treating cancer by removing it. Approximately 91% of prostate cancers diagnosed in the United States are localized, which means that many men are potential candidates for cancer removal. But patients should discuss with the doctor the benefits and disadvantages of each type of treatment.

Surgical removal of the prostate allows the doctor to determine how aggressive the tumor is and how much it expanded. This can be critical because 35% of tumors are diagnosed with a lesser degree of differentiation. This means that neoplastic disease is more aggressive than specialists say there should be a pre-surgery evaluation through a biopsy.

Choosing surgery against radiation may facilitate detection of relapse by monitoring PSA after radical prostatectomy than after radiotherapy. It can also be a backup option if the cancer relapses. After radiotherapy, adjacent prostate tissue may be affected. If there is tissue damage, surgery with preservation thread is no longer an option in case of relapse. However, irradiation remains an option for patients who have already been treated surgically for prostate cancer.

Whatever the treatment chosen, the first priority is survival. Several large studies suggest that long-term survival is higher in patients who have undergone surgery than in other treatments. Patients have been treated by radical prostatectomy have a risk of dying from prostate cancer at 15 years after treatment 40% lower than in cases treated by radiotherapy. (according to a survey conducted on 3159 patients, with respect for diagnosis, race, age, socioeconomic status, Gleason score, biopsy grade and year of diagnosis).