How is Prostate Cancer Treated?
The treatment depends on your health, age, stage of the disease, and your doctor’s advice. But the following seven steps are considered as standard treatment.
7. Surgery:
If you’re healthy and your prostate cancer hasn’t spread, then surgery is though of. Depending on the stage, your doctor may only remove your prostate gland, or also remove around the gland.
The most common side effects of surgery are problems that are controlled by your urine and trouble getting and keeping an erection. Sometimes the effects go away on their own after surgery. Pre-surgery counseling can be helpful.
6. Radiation Therapy:
Using high beams to kill cancer, this procedure is useful in older men and for those with other health problems. This is useful to remove any leftover cancer cells post-surgery and to check cancer spreading to the bone.
There are two types of radiation used for the treatment:
- External: A machine that helps in detecting cancer outside your body directs rays at the cancer cells.
- Internal(Brachytherapy): Surgeon does surgery to place small radioactive “seeds” into or near the cancer cells.
5. Hormone Therapy:
Prostate cancer cells mainly depend on male sex hormones, like testosterone, for their growth. Hormone therapy keeps the cancer cells from getting these hormones. After the hormone treatments, the result lowers the levels of testosterone and other male hormones. Different types block the way those hormones work.
4. Cryotherapy:
The process involves putting needles around the prostate for killing the cancer cells by freezing them with allowing the very cold gases from it. The effectiveness of this procedure is doubtful.
3. Chemotherapy:
Chemotherapy uses a drug that helps in the early stage of prostate cancer. The drugs can be taken orally or injected in the bloodstream. This is a method of choice usually only for advanced cases or when cancer has spread to other parts of the body.
2. Bone-Directed Treatment:
When cancer reaches bones, the drug is used by a surgeon on a patient called bisphosphonates. The drug can help ease pain and prevent breaks. According to patient’s condition, doctors may also suggest a medication given in your veins that sends radiation directly to bones.
1. High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound:
This device produces sound waves that deliver heat energy to kill cancer cells. It’s unclear how well it works as it hasn’t yet been compared with other standard prostate cancer treatments.
You may start with one of these treatments and change it, or your doctor might mix different treatments. You’ll work together to find the best plan.
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What is Prostate Cancer?
Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells of a part of the body. The disease of the prostate is the most common malignancy occurring in men, which usually has fatal outcomes. In India, prostate cancer is among the ten leading sites of cancer. With nearly 25,696 new cases and 17,184 deaths recorded in 2018, the number of affected men with this disease is likely to double in 2020.
Prostate Gland
Prostate is a walnut-shaped gland in the male reproductive system. It produces the hormone testosterone. It is located below the bladder and is surrounded by the urethra.
The functions of the prostate gland are as follows –
- Forming the urine prostate region, controlling the urination
- Transporting the content from semen vesicles and product of gland tube to the urine
- Producing prostate fluid.
- Prostate cancer usually spreads from the prostate to the bones or lymph nodes.
- Prostate cancer may cause pain, difficulty in urinating, problems during sexual intercourse, or erectile dysfunction.
What are the Types of Prostate Cancer?
- Adenocarcinoma: Cancer originates from the main glandular region.
- Small Cell Carcinoma: The origin of cancer is at nerve cells. It is formed of small round cells.
- Squamous Cell Carcinoma: Is a non-glandular cancer.
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What Causes Prostate Cancer?
Though the exact cause remains unknown, age above 45 years and family history act as risk factors for prostate cancer.
Diagnosing the Disease:
Usually, the following tests are used in diagnosis:
- DRE (Digital Rectal Examination.)
- Urinalysis
- Urine Flow Rate
- PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen)
- MRI and CT Scan
- Trans rectal Ultrasound and Prostate Biopsy
- Abdominal Ultrasound
- Cystoscopy
What are the Stages of Prostate Cancer?
There are four stages of Prostate Cancer Disease.
Stage I:
The cancer is not felt on DRE (Digital Rectal Examination). There is no evidence of spread out of the prostate. Found accidently post-surgery for an enlarged prostate.
Stage II:
The tumor is larger than stage I. It is felt on DRE. No evidence of spread out of prostate present. Diagnosed on biopsy of men with higher PSA ((Prostate Specific Antigen)) levels.
Stage III:
Cancer spreads to neighboring tissues.
Stage IV:
Cancer spreads to lymph nodes or neighboring organs.
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