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Prostate Problem Guide
Is There A Prostate Cancer Cure?
After skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer seen in men today with more than 230,000 cases been diagnosed annually in the United States alone. It is also a major cause of death amongst men in the United States and claims more than 30,000 lives every year.
Although prostate cancer is more likely to be seen in African American men, men with a family history of the disease and men over the age of 60, it does not otherwise discriminate in choosing its victims and claims the lives of poor and rich alike including some well know figures like Don Ameche, Bill Bixby, Telly Savalas and Frank Zappa.
While any death is clearly regrettable, the deaths of such well known personalities from prostate cancer has done much to raise the visibility of the disease and this, combined with other figures such as retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and comedian Jerry Lewis who have all publicly fought prostate cancer, has led to greater public awareness and earlier medical intervention. And the results are clear to see.
While some 230,000 people will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, the figure 10 years ago was 330,000. Similarly, while in the region of 30,000 will die from prostate cancer this year, the figure again 10 years ago was nearly 42,000.
ANEUPLOID: having an abnormal number of sets of chromosomes; for example, tetraploid means having two paired sets of chromosomes, which is twice as many as normal; aneuploid cancer cells tend not to respond well to androgen deprivation therapy; aneuploidy refers to the state of being aneuploid.
DOWNSTAGING: the use of hormonal or other forms of management in the attempt to lower the clinical stage of prostate cancer prior to attempted curative treatment (e.g. from stage T3a to stage T2b); this technique is highly controversial
IMRT (INTENSITY MODULATED RADIATION THERAPY): an approach to radiation delivery allowing the treatment team to specify the tumor target dose and the amount of radiation allowable to the nearby tissues and uses sophisticated computer planning to arrive at acceptable equations; sophisticated hardware is also incorporated into this planning that allows the radiation intensity to be modulated up or down as the delivery system rotates around the patient.
RADICAL: (in a surgical sense) directed at the cause of a disease; thus, radical prostatectomy is the surgical removal of the prostate with the intent to cure the problem believed to be caused by or within the prostate.
There are two major problems with prostate cancer. The first is a reluctance on the part of many men to talk about anything to do with their sex organs or to visit their doctor until the symptoms are so bad that they simply don’t have any choice. The second is the fact that it is quite common for men to suffer from an enlarged prostate and therefore to experience problems with urinating as they enter their 60s.
Because an enlarged prostate is a benign condition and enlargement of the prostate generally progresses slowly, they simply put up with the problem as simply another sign of growing old. The problem here is that, while an enlarged prostate does not cause cancer, the symptoms produced by an enlarged prostate can mask the symptoms of a developing prostate cancer.
As with many forms of cancer, the secret to finding a prostate cancer cure lies in the early detection of the condition. If the disease is detected at an early stage when it is still confined to the prostate gland then it can be treated without too much difficulty. Once it starts to spread however into the surrounding tissue, and particularly into bone tissue and the lymphatic system, treatment is far more difficult and less effective.
There are now a variety of tests available to detect the presence of prostate cancer and a prostate cancer cure is certainly within the reach of most men as long as they act quickly as soon as the first signs of trouble appear and consult their doctor.
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