Do you have questions men's health related?
Please send them!
If you have a question related to men's health, please fill the form bellow.
1. It is a must to provide a valid email, unless you want your questions to be ignored.
We won't make your email public, but we like to talk with live persons.
2. To protect
your identity, take care the name you fill. We make public your name exactly as it is.
|
Public release date: 30 March 2009
[
]
Is PSA still worth as a test for prostate cancer?
Unlike most other forms of cancer, the early stages of prostate cancer rarely produce symptoms. As a result, prostate cancer often isn't detected until it has spread to other organs. If detected early, however, chances of treating and curing prostate cancer are high. For the last two decades, the first line of defense has been the PSA test, a simple, relatively inexpensive blood test that measures a prostate-specific antigen produced by the gland. Since cancer cells produce more PSA than normal cells, the level of PSA circulating in the blood is an indication of the probability of cancer.
Two recent studies confirm longstanding concerns about the wisdom of widespread prostate cancer screening using the prostate-specific antigen blood test.
The two studies found that the popular PSA test save few lives and often lead to risky and unnecessary treatments for large numbers of men.
The newest question is: should men age 50 and older have an annual PSA test for prostate cancer?
High levels of PSA, a protein released by prostate cells, suggests that cancer might be present, prompting physicians to order biopsies to determine if cancer exists inside the gland. However, only 25% of those biopsied turn out to have prostate cancer and no clear test is available to distinguish between the faster-growing cancers and the slow ones, resulting in excessive and often unnecessary surgical treatment. Furthermore, about 40% of localized prostate cancers do not secrete high levels of PSA and are missed entirely.
Moreover, since the majority of prostate cancers are not life threatening, older men are more likely to die with the disease than from the disease. Therefore, the challenge of diagnosing prostate cancer in its early stage is not merely identifying the presence of cancer, but the ability to determine if the cancer is low risk or aggressive and life threatening. Until prostate cancer-specific markers are identified the diagnostic challenge of identifying men at risk will not be met.
An elevated prostate can reflect anything from an infection to the normal enlargement of the prostate that comes with age. Doctors have to look at the patient as a whole. Are there any symptoms of prostatitis? Have any members of his family had prostate cancer? Did you feel a nodule when you did a digital rectal exam? What about the patient's age? A 65-year-old patient with a PSA of 4 should not necessarily be treated the same way as a 52 year old or a 45 year old with the same PSA.
|
|
