Know More About Prostate Cancer

Hello friends, I am Dr Sajjan Rajpurohit. I am a cancer specialist at Rajeev Gandhi Cancer Institute, South Delhi. Today I will talk about the cancer which affects our senior citizens between the age of 50-60 years. It is the cancer in men. Some people most of teh time ignore it as it is a part of normal lifestyle or ageing. But what happens the cancer to begin withn as the symptoms are quite similar to the prostatic hypertrophy. So, I am going to talk about Carcinoma Prostate. 

Prostate is an organ which is a male sex organ. It helps in generating fluid which is a composition fo Semen and it also helps in protecting the urine from getting infected. But with an advaced age, there is an increase in the size of prostate and sometimes a growing prostate can turn cancerous.

So, Carcinoma prostate usually manifest as symptoms which are quite similar to Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy (BPH). 

So, the symptoms will be;

• Frequency of urination
• Urgency of urination
• Difficulty during the urine passage
• Nocturia which means incraesing urination at night, the person has to get up 3-4 times for urine
• Blood in urine
• Constipation
• Pain during urination

These are the earlier signs whereas in the later stages there can be the lower back ache or weight loss. In advanced cases, there can be the involvement of other organs such as liver, lungs whihc can ultimately lead to jaundice, cough, breathlessness.

So, the important thing is to differentiate from the beginning, from the cvery common condition. 1/3rd of the men suffer beyond the age of 60 years, that is, BPH.

It is sometime confused with the very common disease or I can say the physical change in the body which is in the form of Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy. It is very important for your doctor or you to be aware of that these symptoms can be over lapping with the symptoms or with these disease. So, the medicines of BPH should not be started just on teh basis of the symptoms.A patient must undergo a good quality Ultrasound, Serrum PSA levels. If the PSA levels are high or the prostate on ultarsound appears suspicious for cancer, then it should be followed up for MR Imagine or a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the lower abdomen or the Pelvis and depending upon that sometimes the PSA levels are high then the patient should undergo the Biopsy of the prostate.

Once the diagnosis is established, we stage the disease. The staging of disease will depend upon whether it is only confined to the stages of Prostates or it is going beyond the prostate. Most common side of other organ involvement is the lower back ro the back bone. The good thing about these cancers is that more than 80% of the these are low grade and they grow over many years. So, there is no need to immediately panic and if it is organ confined then it can be treated and cured with either surgery or direct with radiations. We have got Robotic surgery, very high resolution as well as very conformal radiation techique available with us whioch can treat the local forms of prostate cancer. Many of the people will be cured of the disease. Even in advanced cases nowadays with the advances and the oncology, the disease can be conbtrolled for many years and the patient can be asymptomatic.

People are living healthy and normal lives as they were living before getting this disease. So you need to be aware of this entity because it is on eof the common cancers in men. But if we and our physician is alert, they will definitely rule this out.

So, this is all I wanted to tell you about Carcinoma Prostate. Do not fear about the cancer. Many advances are happening on every day basis in the cancer managemnety and the future looks very promising to me.

If you need any help for Carcinoma Prostate or if you know someone who need any help for the same, you can contact me on my email which is sajjanrajpurohit@yahoo.com or you can contact me through Lybrate.

If you want to take an appointment, I sit in Rajeev Gandhi Cancer Institute, South Delhi.

Thank you.