Prostate - best way to determine when BPH is turning into cancer
- Thread starter barnacler
- Start date
Colonoscopy is a test that allows your doctor to look at the inner lining of your large intestine (rectum and colon). He or she uses a thin, flexible tube called a colonoscope to look at the colon. A colonoscopy helps find ulcers, colon polyps, tumors, and areas of inflammation or bleeding. This is a start!
My understanding is that the psa is still a good warning tool, not perfect but if your numbers start changing drastically something could be up. Then there is ultrasound and of course a biopsy. Never heard of mri but I'm sure it can be possible.
Regular PSA blood tests are the preferred way of checking and monitoring Prostate cancer. The medical profession have moved away from aggressive treatment to "monitoring" the PSA numbers. The great majority of prostate cancers will not kill you (something else will) and will not even require any treatment. However, there are exceptions to the rule, if the cancer becomes aggressive.
For definite cancer detection you will need a biopsy, which (I assure you) is not a pleasant experience.
If anyone is going for a PSA test you should refrain from (as in don't have any) sex for 3 days prior to the test. This included masturbation. If you do, your numbers could be falsely elevated. I get a PSA test every year, then one test was surprisingly higher. My doctor asked if I's had sex in the past couple days, which I had. He sent me to get tested again and told me to not have sex for 3 days prior. Test came back normal.
While the PSA is a good baseline, it should not replace the DRE (digital rectal exam). My doctor recommends performing both tests and compares the two. She also said even doing a DRE is enough to stimulate the prostate which is enough to raise your PSA numbers.
So the moral of the story is... Getting a PSA? Don't have sex, a wank or DRE for 3 days before the test. I think the medical profession says 2 days but my doctor says 3 to be safe.
Of all the people I've talked to who've had a PSA test, none of them knew about abstaining for a few days before.
The last I checked my Gray's Anatomy, the prostate isn't anywhere near the colon... they're completely unrelated. A colonoscopy won't do anything to screen for prostate cancer, any more than it will a brain tumour.
Regular PSA checks (although they have frequent false readings), digital checks, and ultimately a biopsy would be the best bets.
And at the risk of repeating something that has been said here many times, this is a question for your Doctor. If you aren't convinced your GP knows enough, have him/her refer you to a specialist. Medical advice from a bunch of horny guys isn't really something you should rely on.
There are also numerous legitimate websites that can provide general information, but you need to assure yourself that they're credible sites... and even then, take the information and use it to develop questions for your Doctor.
The latest is that an MRI should be had before any biopsies are taken. And when a biopsy is taken, they should be directed by MRI at the suspicious part. Unfortunately, it is not done in Ontario, as OHIP has to re-invent the wheel in order to accept and fund the necessary equipment. It's now the standard in Australia.
Unfortunatly for most doctors, prostate science is like voodoo. Little is understood, even by some urologists, and the traditional tests are notoriously unreliable, to either confirm a cancerous tumour or to dispell that one exists.
The 12 needle biopsy, where the doctor pokes your prostate through the rectal wall with a biopsy needle 12 times in a cross-section has a false negative rate of 49% (when cancer exists, it is missed 49% of the time) and a false positive rate (of life threatening prostate cancer) of about 35%. This test often causes your urine to contain blood for as much as 2 months, and gives you prostatitis (no wonder) for that long. It also probably injects e-coli (that reside in the rectum) into the heart of the prostate, that are naturally found in the digestive tract. So if you didn't have an infection before, you're gonna have one now. There's also a 72 needle grid biopsy.....
The doctor feeling your prostate only covers the posterior part, and they could miss a tumour in the anterior part.
The PSA test is an indication of inflamation of the prostate. Prostatitis is an inflamation, and is not necessarily caused by cancer. So a high PSA does not necessarily indicate cancer. However, the rate of PSA increase is a clue. The prostate starts expanding for a significant portion of middle aged men, leading to the discomfort of prostatitis; this increases the PSA levels, but that's not necessarily cancer.
Apparently, 70% of men who died at 80 had cancer cells in their prostate. But it wasn't the cancer that killed them. So even if they do find cancer in the prostate, chances are that it's slow growing and something else will kill you way before the cancer will.
Unfortunatly for most doctors, prostate science is like voodoo. Little is understood, even by some urologists, and the traditional tests are notoriously unreliable, to either confirm a cancerous tumour or to dispell that one exists.
The 12 needle biopsy, where the doctor pokes your prostate through the rectal wall with a biopsy needle 12 times in a cross-section has a false negative rate of 49% (when cancer exists, it is missed 49% of the time) and a false positive rate (of life threatening prostate cancer) of about 35%. This test often causes your urine to contain blood for as much as 2 months, and gives you prostatitis (no wonder) for that long. It also probably injects e-coli (that reside in the rectum) into the heart of the prostate, that are naturally found in the digestive tract. So if you didn't have an infection before, you're gonna have one now. There's also a 72 needle grid biopsy.....
The doctor feeling your prostate only covers the posterior part, and they could miss a tumour in the anterior part.
The PSA test is an indication of inflamation of the prostate. Prostatitis is an inflamation, and is not necessarily caused by cancer. So a high PSA does not necessarily indicate cancer. However, the rate of PSA increase is a clue. The prostate starts expanding for a significant portion of middle aged men, leading to the discomfort of prostatitis; this increases the PSA levels, but that's not necessarily cancer.
Apparently, 70% of men who died at 80 had cancer cells in their prostate. But it wasn't the cancer that killed them. So even if they do find cancer in the prostate, chances are that it's slow growing and something else will kill you way before the cancer will.
