Prostate Cancer Screening
Published on Mar 29 2010, in the categories: Signs of disease, Useful Info, Ways of detection
Detecting the early stages of a prostate cancer can be a tricky task if men tend not to seek for medical counseling after the age of forty.
Unfortunately, when symptoms like frequent and painful urination do appear it is the definitive sign to see a doctor. We simply can not talk about early symptoms of the prostate cancer because they aren’t any.
This is a type of cancer with a slow growth, doubling its size once every four years, so there are known cases when symptoms did not appear until the cancer reached an advanced stage and in some other reported cases the patients died because of a different disease.
An early diagnosis of the precise prostate disorder could be obtained by using the screening procedure. The screening tests have to be done at regular periods of time, to detect early or tiny cancers and locally confined. The results of the screening tests can either be normal, when cancer is not detected, or abnormal, so further tests are necessary like a prostate biopsy.
The screening should be done starting from the age of forty, especially by all American African men known to have a higher risk to get a prostate cancer in comparison to the American-Caucasian ones.
The screening tests include the common procedures like digital rectal exam or DRE and the prostate specific antigen blood tests or PSA. In the DRE test a doctor usually inserts a gloved finger into the rectum to feel the size of the prostate. The last one is used as an indicator to see how far cancer has spread apart from the gland. While both diagnosing procedures may be unpleasant and do not give a one hundred per cent accurate result, they still remain the best methods of discovering the prostate cancer in its early stages.
In the DRE test, if a lump or hardness is felt on the surface of the prostate it could indicate a possible prostate disorder or even cancer.
The PSA blood test uses as an indicator for determining the recurrence of prostate cancer the prostate-specific antigen and is recommended to be done annually, especially by men over forty. If the PSA test result indicates under four nanograms per milliliter of blood then it is considered as a normal result, the result between four and ten is at the borderline, depending on the patients age, genetic inheritance, symptoms and even race, while a result higher than ten is abnormal, and it is necessary for a doctor to inquire further medical investigations to reach an exact diagnosis. Values between thirty and forty indicate the existence of a prostate cancer.
The next best thing after reaching a diagnosis is to start treating this disease, but not before you learn about all the treatment options available for your cancer stage. It is a doctor’s responsibility to keep you informed about all that prostate cancer is about.
Unfortunately, when symptoms like frequent and painful urination do appear it is the definitive sign to see a doctor. We simply can not talk about early symptoms of the prostate cancer because they aren’t any.
This is a type of cancer with a slow growth, doubling its size once every four years, so there are known cases when symptoms did not appear until the cancer reached an advanced stage and in some other reported cases the patients died because of a different disease.
An early diagnosis of the precise prostate disorder could be obtained by using the screening procedure. The screening tests have to be done at regular periods of time, to detect early or tiny cancers and locally confined. The results of the screening tests can either be normal, when cancer is not detected, or abnormal, so further tests are necessary like a prostate biopsy.
The screening should be done starting from the age of forty, especially by all American African men known to have a higher risk to get a prostate cancer in comparison to the American-Caucasian ones.
The screening tests include the common procedures like digital rectal exam or DRE and the prostate specific antigen blood tests or PSA. In the DRE test a doctor usually inserts a gloved finger into the rectum to feel the size of the prostate. The last one is used as an indicator to see how far cancer has spread apart from the gland. While both diagnosing procedures may be unpleasant and do not give a one hundred per cent accurate result, they still remain the best methods of discovering the prostate cancer in its early stages.
In the DRE test, if a lump or hardness is felt on the surface of the prostate it could indicate a possible prostate disorder or even cancer.
The PSA blood test uses as an indicator for determining the recurrence of prostate cancer the prostate-specific antigen and is recommended to be done annually, especially by men over forty. If the PSA test result indicates under four nanograms per milliliter of blood then it is considered as a normal result, the result between four and ten is at the borderline, depending on the patients age, genetic inheritance, symptoms and even race, while a result higher than ten is abnormal, and it is necessary for a doctor to inquire further medical investigations to reach an exact diagnosis. Values between thirty and forty indicate the existence of a prostate cancer.
The next best thing after reaching a diagnosis is to start treating this disease, but not before you learn about all the treatment options available for your cancer stage. It is a doctor’s responsibility to keep you informed about all that prostate cancer is about.
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