What should you know before going through a prostate cancer surgery?

It is important for layman people to understand what prostate cancer is and the characteristics that indicate its presence of it in a person. It may be rudimentary but a common man does not have this knowledge that the prostate is a gland present only in males. There is a fine line between prostate enlargement disease and this cancer and your doctor has to be completely aware of your symptoms before declaring any treatment for you. For that, you must have an understanding of the important prostate cancer symptoms that you have to check in yourself before mentioning them to your doctor. Before jumping to the definition of this cancer, we prefer to give you an idea of what actually is the prostate.

How is the prostate a gland?

When we talk about the prostate, we only speak of men. Why is it so? This is due to the fact that this organ is only present in males and plays a vital role in the production of a fluid known as semen. Going to the basic definition of a gland, any organ that produces and secretes some type of substances naturally in the human body is known as a gland. This makes the prostate an important gland as it secretes the protective and nutritive fluid which carries male sex cells, also known as the sperms. This gland is located beneath the bladder in males and is connected to the tubule that supplies the semen from the prostate along with the sperm from the gonads to the penis at the time of ejaculation.

How to define prostate cancer?

What makes this condition be characterized as cancer is the fact that, like other cancers, this condition is also caused by a mutation inside the cells. There are various types of mutation inside the cells of the prostate which can contribute towards the expression of this cancer. These mutations can be stimulated my many factors and some of them are very common. Once the normality of these cells has been compromised, they multiply and grow abnormally causing the whole prostate to get enlarged. Apart from that, prostate cancer can also be characterized by the formation of lumps outside this gland due to the accumulation of cancerous cells. Depending upon the type of prostate cancer, the complications accompanied by it can range from very mild to severe.

What are some of the common prostate cancer causes?

Age: The majority of patients with cancer in the prostate are older than 60. One of the reasons of the fact that this cancer has become a chronic condition in older people is the contribution of other health conditions, like diabetes, that they usually have. Fortunately, with the presence of very effective treatment options nowadays, we are able to save our senior citizens from this condition.

Heredity: It is estimated that 60 percent of prostate cancer is caused due to inheritance. This makes genetic factors a major component of this disease but the doctors are still more concerned about environmental factors. The reason behind this fact is that the human genome is already mapped out completely and we are able to trace the specific genes that play the key role in the development of this condition. However, there is new research being done on this subject and it is speculated that there are some genetic variants that put people at very high risk of developing this cancer.

Food: If we had to make a strong hypothesis related to the impact of diet on prostate cancer, it is necessary for us to refer to the work which has been done to look at the preventive measures for the progression of this cancer through dietary intervention. Researchers have been conducting experiments for this subject for over 30 years and there is epidemiological evidence that shows that people who eat high amounts of vegetables have a lower incidence of cancer. So, it is possible that a high amount of animal protein in the diet is a risk factor for developing this condition.

Hormone: As testosterone is directly linked with the growth of the prostate gland, high amounts of this hormone can lead to the enlargement of the prostate. Also during the condition of cancer in the prostate, patients are seemed to have overactive testosterone receptors. This creates a loop of increase in testosterone leading to further enlargement of the prostate.

Which of the prostate cancer symptoms are most common?

Because of the location of the prostate gland, cancer in this organ causes symptoms that are related to the bladder. However, most of these symptoms appear only in the advanced stages of the disease:

• Not being able to pass urine satisfyingly
• Hematuria
• Feeling of urgency to urinate even after urinating a second ago
• Back pain
• Bladder pain during urination

Prostate cancer treatment options

For most patients, it is important to stage their cancer before moving forward with any treatment. This is to confirm if the cancer has spread elsewhere other than the prostate. If you have this condition, the first step towards treatment would be having a long comprehensive discussion with your doctor about the options you have.

It is important for your doctor to confirm whether cancer warrants treatment because it might one day cause problems. This is because, for most patient, there is such a low likelihood of their cancer-causing problem that the doctor initiates surveillance or monitoring of cancer and guide the patients in their lifestyle change. This lifestyle change in most patients has been proven to be more appropriate than other treatment options.

Other than this, the treatment options for prostate cancer are:

• Robotic surgery
• Different forms of radiation therapy
• Ablative therapy

Conclusion

For an individual, there might be a clear prostate cancer treatment option and the doctors will highly recommend it to you. However, in most men there are multiple prostate cancer causes which can create a dilemma regarding the option of treatment they should go for. It is the job of a professional urologist to inform you about the best option for you after understanding your prostate cancer symptoms and stage. Your doctor must be well able to make you aware of all the pros and cons of every treatment approach. In the end, it is up to you to decide the path you will go for as your treatment but it is always better to have someone as experienced as Dr. Dushyant Pawar to lay out all your option and execute the one which you will decide with utmost expertise.

Contact us now to fix an appointment with the most professional urologist: Dr. Dushyant Pawar