Be there early!
You tend to associate prostate cancer with older men. That is correct, because the majority of patients are 65 years or older. However, the disease is increasingly common at a younger age.
The prostate is a gland located under the male bladder and surrounding the urethra. It resembles a chestnut in shape and size. Cancer can develop in the cells of the glandular ducts of the prostate. This changes the prostate tissue, making the prostate larger and/or harder.
Numbers
This cancer is diagnosed in approximately 9000 Dutch men every year. Yet many more men suffer from this disease. Prostate cancer often grows so slowly that many very old men do not suffer from it. They are more likely to die from another cause than to develop symptoms of prostate cancer.
More than 70 percent of those diagnosed with prostate cancer are over 65 years of age. This makes it seem like an old man’s disease. Yet more and more younger men (from the age of forty) are also getting prostate cancer.
80 percent of all men diagnosed with prostate cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis. This percentage is higher without metastases, lower with metastases. Metastases, however, only occur at a late stage of the disease.
All these figures say nothing about a person’s individual situation, only the doctor can say something meaningful about it. In any case, it’s good to catch it early, that goes for any disease.
How do you know if you have prostate cancer?
Because prostate cancer grows so slowly, the disease often causes no symptoms for a long time. Sometimes prostate cancer is only discovered when there are metastases elsewhere in the body.
However, there are indeed complaints that can indicate prostate cancer. Can point, because it is certainly not the case that the symptoms below mean that you have prostate cancer. It could just as well be a urinary tract infection or an enlarged prostate.
If you have any of the following symptoms, please visit your doctor:
- having to urinate more often than usual
- difficulty urinating
- pain and burning sensation when urinating
- dripping and/or a weak stream when urinating
- cloudy or bloody urine
Your doctor may do a rectal examination. This means that he enters the rectum with his finger through the anus, so that he can feel whether there are abnormalities in the prostate.
This is often combined with blood tests, the so-called PSA test. This allows the amount of proteins in the prostate to be measured. An increase in this amount may indicate prostate cancer. If the GP suspects prostate cancer, he will refer you to a urologist. He can repeat the rectal exam and PSA test, but he will do more tests to be sure. Examples of research that the urologist does:
- Ultrasound: the prostate is imaged by an ultrasound through the anus.
- Biopsy: tissue is removed from different areas of the prostate.
If prostate cancer is established on the basis of this examination, a CT scan, an MRI scan and/or lymph node removal can determine the size of the cancer and whether there are any metastases. In this way, the doctor can also best advise on the treatment to be followed.
How are you treated?
The vast majority of men with prostate cancer are treated curatively: that is, no metastases have been identified and the goal is a cure. The rest are treated palliatively: they have metastases and the aim is to inhibit the disease and reduce the symptoms. The doctor will advise one of the treatment forms below, or a combination of different forms. This depends on the tumor itself, but also on the age and condition of the patient.
Operation
All or part of the prostate can be removed.
Radiation (radiation therapy)
The prostate can be irradiated internally and externally, or both.
Hormonal therapy
Hormones can stop the development and growth of cancer cells in the prostate.
Chemotherapy
A fairly new form of treatment for prostate cancer, in which drugs are administered in a course of treatment. Sometimes doctors choose to wait with treatment, for example when the tumor grows only very slowly.
