To start with, not every person needs to have prostate cancer screening regularly. Many factors are involved in a decision to do a prostate cancer screening – and it will help to have the right facts and facts and factors with you. It is best to ask your doctor if you need to have prostate cancer screening, but the answer may not be simple as there will be some discussion involved.
- FACT: While one in six men (16.67 %) will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point, only about thirty-three percent die from it (ie about 5.5 %). Early treatment is effective and other conditions can cause death before prostate cancer.
- FACT: prostate cancer screening can not catch all cases of prostate cancer and it won’t help those who have aggressive forms of prostate cancer. You and your doctor can look into the sufficient information to make a reasonable decision about prostate cancer screening.
- FACT: Both the cancerous and non-cancerous prostate tissue produces a protein called prostate-specific antigen or PSA. This is a protein that helps to liquefy semen and helps it to enter the bloodstream at certain rates depending on the prostate health. This means that PSA isn’t specific only to prostate cancer. However, the PSA levels will typically be higher with prostate cancer than with non-cancerous tissue.
- FACT: Even aggressive forms of prostate cancer may not produce PSA so it is important to still have a digital rectal exam. Other factors also influence the results of prostate cancer screening, such as the size of a person’s prostate and how quickly the PSA levels change.
Suggestions:
If a man has another serious disease that shortens their life expectancy then screening may not be necessary. There are some men who even live a long healthy life without ever knowing they have prostate cancer, eventually dying of something other than prostate cancer.
Men may not show any signs or symptoms of prostate cancer if it grows too slow which also means it won’t become a threat to a mans length and quality of life. When it comes to these conditions you can see why it isn’t necessary for everyone to have prostate cancer screening. However, since prostate cancer screening has become available the death rate has decreased for prostate cancer.
It is important to have a physician who is experienced in interpreting PSAs since there is a complexity within the relating factors. An experienced doctor can properly evaluate your situation and avoid any unnecessary or inappropriate invasive testing and treatment.