Some of these symptoms are also associated with some other conditions that can affect the prostate. For instance, when the prostate gets enlarged, gets infected, or experience what is referred to as Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), these symptoms can still appear.

The question now is this, what test or screening is to be done to really diagnose cancer of the prostate cancer separately from other similar conditions? This article is going to throw some light on two popular screening procedures usually prescribed for men that are to be diagnosed of cancer of the prostate.  These are the PSA test and DRE screening.

• PSA Screening – this is a kind of blood test that tends to examine the amount to PSA in the blood. PSA stands for prostate Specific Antigen. It is an enzyme or protein substance usually secreted by the prostate gland. An elevated amount of PSA is usually found in the blood of men with prostate cancer.

The PSA test has not really been accepted as a standard screening procedure for cancer of the prostate. This is because of a lot of faulty positive results that may often occur. However, it can help to doctors to determine if the patient has elevated amount PSA in the blood.

• DRE Screening – DRE refers to Digital Rectal Exam. It is a screening procedure in which the doctor inserts a gloved and lubricated finger into the rectum to feel any lump of enlarged prostate. The need for this exam is based on the fact that prostate cancer can result in the enlargement of the prostate gland.

DRE still has some issues as it may ignore other symptoms and misdiagnose other conditions. However, it is still a good screening option applied to test for prostate cancer in men.

The combination of PSA and DRE can yield better result as screening procedures to detect early cancer of the prostate. However, others screening procedures like the carrying out of tissues biopsies can be used to provide a more authentic diagnosis.

Finally, PSA and DRE, despite not yielding the best of results as prostate cancer screening, are still very important aspect of prostate cancer diagnosis today.  Talk to your doctor about the screening tests for prostate cancer today.

 That being said, we are going to look at the early symptoms and advanced symptoms of prostate cancer.

For a start, cancer of the prostate is the second highest killer of cancer diseases for men. It ranks only second to cancer of the lungs. The cancer originates from the prostate gland, a walnut size tissue near the rectum and below the bladder or men. It forms part of the reproductive system in men.

This cancer grows slowly and the early symptoms may not really have any significant effect on the person until when it gets to the advanced stage. With this alarming fact it becomes necessary to get all symptoms facts there are about this condition that is affecting millions of men globally.

 Early symptoms of prostate cancer

Tentatively speaking, the very early symptoms of prostate cancer do not show any warning signs, however the following symptoms can still be said to be early warning signs if the cancer is still localized within the prostate tissues:

• Inability to initiate urine
• A frequent need for the man to stand up to  urinate at night
• A painful sensation in the course of urination
• A weak urinary  stream
• A burning sensations during ejaculation
• Blood in the semen during ejaculation
• Blood in urine

 Advanced symptoms of prostate cancer

When the cancer cells have extended to other parts of the body beyond the prostate, then they are said to be advanced. The symptoms in this case, are more dangerous and could be life threatening. These include:

• Extreme Fatigue, vomiting, loss of weight, loss of appetite, and  nausea
• Pain in the bones, ribs, upper thighs, lower back, and pelvis.
• Paralysis  in  the legs
• Constipation in the bowels and swelling of the lower extremities.

Conclusively, these are highlights of the early and advanced symptoms of prostate cancer. You should call your doctor to check properly if you experience one or more of the symptoms above. It is important that early detection of prostate cancer is made so as to achieve early and effective treatment.

However, it should be noted that elevated levels of PSA is not only an indication that the person could be suffering from prostate cancer but there are yet other causes of elevated PSA levels. These other causes are discussed below.

• Prostatitis – This is a condition that causes inflammation on the prostate gland. Usually, infections and other unclear factors can cause this inflammation. A person suffering from Prostatitis can be diagnosed with high levels of PSA. This is more especially if the person has chronic Prostatitis.
• Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) – This condition is often described as enlarged prostate. Most men who are more than 50years of age are diagnosed with this condition.BPH is a non-cancerous growth of the prostate gland, hence the prostate can swell but does not spread like prostate cancer. The PSA levels of those with BPH can rise just as for people diagnosed with cancer in the prostate.
• Recent Ejaculation – The passing out of semen from the penis during sexual intercourse or otherwise is referred to as ejaculation. However, this habit can spike the level of prostate Specific Antigen or PSA. When going for a prostate cancer test, the man could be advised by the doctor to avoid sexual activity of any act that may lead to ejaculation a few days before his blood sample is taken for PSA test.
• Biopsy and Digital Rectal Exam (DRE) – These are other types of tests that can spike the level of prostate Specific Antigen in the blood. Biopsy involves the taking of tissue samples of the prostate to be examined under the microscope. In most cases, this procedure artificially elevates the PSA level. This is more likely to occur if biopsy is conducted a few days before PSA test. Also, Digital Rectal Exam (DRE) conducted before PSA test can spike the level of PSA in the blood. Thus, to avoid false positives in prostate cancer screening, the PSA test is better conducted several days before biopsy or DRE.
• Finally, another factor that can cause elevated PSA in the blood is the bicycle riding. A study published in the Journal of Urology linked bicycle riding with PSA test. It was reported that strenuous bicycle riding can spike up the PSA level on a short term.

So, these are some of the other factors that can elevate the level of the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) in the body. With this understanding, it is important to note that increase in your PSA level may not necessarily mean you would be diagnosed with prostate cancer. Your doctor can carry out other diagnostic methods to complement PSA blood levels to truly diagnose or screen cancer in your prostate.

For a start, Dr. Donald Gleason developed this system as a tool for staging prostate cancer in men. He is a pathologist that worked with the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Hospital in the 1960s. Since then the use of the Gleason Grading System has become an important diagnostic procedure in staging cancer that originates from the prostate gland. This gland is found in men and forms part of the reproductive system.

How the Gleason Grading System works

The procedure for staging prostate cancer (i.e. determining what stage or how aggressive the cancerous cells are) through Gleason Grading system is initiated by taking samples of prostate tissues through a method called biopsy. The tissues extracted from the body are prepared on microscopic slides to be observed under a microscope. A pathologist, a radiologist, or a urologist can carryout these functions.

Under the microscope, a grade is assigned to the primary tumor pattern (i.e. the prominent nature of the cancerous). The secondary tumor pattern is also graded. The grade assign to each pattern ranges from 1 – 5. The higher the number the more aggressive is the cancer. The Gleason Score is obtained when two Gleason grades are added. For instance, if the primary tumor pattern is 4 and the next tumor pattern is 3, the Gleason Score will be 4+3= 7. The ranges of the Gleason score are from 2 to 10. Also, the highest numbers of the Gleason scores have the worst prognosis for prostate cancer.

The first number is assigned to the primary tumor pattern, while the second number is assigned to the next pattern. However, it must be noted that the Gleason score that has a primary tumor pattern of 3 and a secondary tumor pattern of 4 is less severe than when the numbers are reversed for each pattern. Hence, 3+4=7 is less aggressive than a 4+3=7 Gleason Score. It is very important to understand this!

Final note on the Gleason Grading System

So, the Gleason score is used to stage prostate cancer. Fewer score means less aggressiveness of the cancer, and vice versa. The primary tumor patterns are those that cover more than 50% of the total patterns of the tissues. The secondary or next tumor pattern covers less than 50% of the total tissue patterns.

Conclusively, it is important you understand the Gleason Grade (Gleason Pattern) and the Gleason Score (Gleason Sum) so you know if your prostate cancer has the best or worst prognosis. I hope this article has been useful to you in some way. Talk to your urologist or Pathologist to get further explanations.

The fact that there are no symptoms in early stage prostate cancer certainly does not make matters very much easier, with improved and more widespread screening and screening tests, up to 90% of all prostate cancer cases in the United States today are diagnosed early, says the American Cancer Society, at a time when the cancer is both treatable and curable.

One of the screening tests that are used in the screening efforts to detect prostate cancer early is the PSA test, one that a lot of Americans must have heard about at this time, even if they have not experienced it. The PSA test reads the amount or volume of prostate specific antigens (PSAs) in the blood of the patient in order to determine the presence of ailments in the organ. Most men have PSA in their blood at all times, but its level in the body is usually below the critical 4.0ng/ml. 

Prostate cancer cells cause the production of more PSA that are seeped into the blood, as a result when a man suffers from the carcinoma, higher levels of this enzyme are found in his blood and the disease is immediately suspected. That’s right, higher blood PSA levels do not imply that a man has prostate cancer because a lot of other ailments, especially those that affect the prostate gland, also result in PSA spikes. That is why the PSA test is merely a screening and not a diagnostic one. In order to confirm the diagnosis, a biopsy of the prostate gland may be necessary.

The PSA level of a patient however takes on more importance once the cancer has been confirmed – it becomes sort of an indicator of the severity of the patient’s suffering and how far the cancer must have spread. Of course to determine this, other staging tests have to be carried out to determine how much the disease has metastasized, but the results often have to be merged for the best results.

People should be warned that the PSA test is by no means a conclusive one. As mentioned earlier, sometimes the patient could merely be suffering from some other infection or disorder to have a higher PSA level; and in converse, there are actually some manifestations of prostate cancer that do not cause PSA rises, such as small cell sarcomas. A man at risk of prostate cancer would need to be rather more vigilant.

To that end, the American Cancer Society has instituted a number of prostate cancer screening programs that will aid in detecting the disease early enough to make a difference. In addition, they have urged that men approaching middle age should start to go for regular medical checkups at least once a year. The timing for this follows the fact that prostate cancer is not common among men younger than 45 years old, and its incidence steadily rises from 50 years of age.

The screening programs for prostate cancer generally begin with the DRE test – direct rectal examination. During this procedure, the doctor inserts a gloved finger into the rectum of the would-be patient and feels the organ in question for any anomalies such as a distortion, a swelling, or something of that nature.

It is an inconclusive test, but if the physician feels the need for it, he can order another test – the PSA test – to determine if indeed his suspicions are right. Even if the DRE test was negative, the PSA test being a step further up would certainly provide more information.

All men have a certain amount of prostate specific antigens in their blood, but if they are in good prostate health, the level is never up to 4.0ng/ml in the blood. Anything at that level or more is cause for concern, although it could mean that the man suffer from something else besides prostate cancer. Extracting some blood to be examined in the lab should provide the necessary information.

A lot does ride on the intuition of the oncologist or urologist in charge of the procedure, and on the paranoia of the man undergoing the screening. Even though both the DRE and PSA tests do not point directly to prostate cancer, either party may decide that a prostate biopsy is necessary.

During the biopsy a special needle is inserted into the organ the same way a DRE test is done, and tissue samples are extracted from it to be examined under a microscope in the laboratory. More than just telling that the man has prostate cancer (or not), the biopsy provides further critical information about the disease such as the Gleason numbers and the Gleason score, which more or less provide the first basic knowledge about the stage of the disease.

But PSA Test Can Be Inaccurate

But interestingly, there are too many things that are uncertain about the results obtained from a PSA test. For one, the fact that a man has a higher PSA count than is proper does not imply that he has prostate cancer, and the fact that a man has prostate cancer does not imply that his PSA levels will rise.

There are certain forms of prostate cancer, as a matter of fact, that specifically do not cause a rise in the level of prostate specific antigens in the blood of the patient while they are advancing. A small cell sarcoma is a brilliant example of this, one manifestation of the disease that is so difficult to catch that it is often quite advanced before that is done. Waiting to see a raised PSA count would certainly be a problem with something like that.

So why then is the PSA still so important?

Screening for prostate cancer is by no means a walk in the park, and the most definitive assurance of a diagnosis is rather invasive because of the poking of the organ by a needle. In order to lower expense and discomfort to the patient, other tests have to be conducted to see if the biopsy of the prostate is indeed called for.

Several other diseases cause a spike PSA count in the blood – and could raise it over the critical 4.0ng/ml that depicts if the patient might be in trouble or not. If this is the case, then the biopsy is justified; if it does not happen however, then the doctor may decide not to go ahead with the efforts to diagnoses the disease.

Once the patient has been confirmed to have prostate cancer, though, the PSA count certainly becomes important because it may now be used as some kind of barometer to determine the seriousness of the disease – it’s aggression and the level of its advancements – along with the results gotten from the biopsy (the Gleason score) and other tests that are generally conducted afterward, which include MRI scans, computer tomography (CT) scans, and ribonucleic bone scans.

During treatment, the PSA level of the patient is thus monitored for any sudden or drastic changes; even though it may mean nothing, at least it will help determine if more needs be done. In the meantime, researchers are looking for other less invasive yet more definitive ways to diagnose the disease.

Just recently we discovered what could be a more effective PSA Testing. We wrote an article about it. Click here to read about it.

One of the most common of these symptoms is frequent urination, which mostly increased at night; it is often accompanied with a noted difficulty in starting a stream of urine, and also a noted difficulty in maintaining a steady stream of urine while it is up. Blood in the urine is common at the very least, and painful urination is as well. There may also be certain notable problems with sexual function and performance, especially difficulty achieving an erection and/or painful ejaculation.

Prostate cancer is associated with urinary dysfunction because of the location of the prostate gland. The organ surrounds the prostatic urethra in such a manner that changes within the gland directly affect the patient’s urinary function. Also as a result of the fact that the vas deferens deposits seminal fluid into the prostatic urethra, and secretions from the prostate gland itself are included in semen content. This leads the condition thence to cause the sexual problems.

There are certain forms of cancer that beat the best screening and diagnostic tests because of their aggressive nature. Small cell sarcomas, for instance, never cause an enlarged prostate nor a spike in the PSA blood level of the patient. This may result in the patient not detecting the disease until it is quite advanced and even more deadly.

This advanced prostate cancer typically spreads to other parts of the body, and naturally this causes other additional symptoms. Even the adenocarcinoma, if it gets a chance to advance that far will cause the same symptoms due to bone metastasis of the disease – the most common, bone pain. The bone pain is often in the lower back region, the chest, the hips, and the upper parts of the thigh. These are signals that the cancer has spread to the bones of the spine, pelvis, ribs, and the proximal part of the femur.

Late stage advanced prostate cancer is even worse still. Tumor metastasis can cause the cancerous cells to be incident in the spine as well. This also gets to compress the spinal cord and result in further complications like leg weakness and incontinence. It has been known to lead to eventual paralysis.

We just found an interesting news article that throws more light on a kind of more advanced PSA test that can detect prostate cancer better than the usual PSA tests.

As you may already know, the usual PSA tests usually throws false positives, which leads to even more biopsies and treatments that may not even be necessary.

This has cost many men lots of money as well as endless mental and psychological traumas. Hopefully not anymore, if the story about this new PSA Pro Test is to be believed.

Read this news article below:

WASHINGTON, D.C (Ivanhoe Newswire) –The PSA test is the only available FDA approved screening method to identify prostate cancer in men. But, the test has been controversial for years because it’s not always accurate – causing some men unnecessary biopsies and needless treatment. We’ll tell you about a better, more accurate test for prostate cancer.

When Dan Zenka learned he had prostate cancer, his doctor let him know how serious the diagnosis was.

“He indicated that mine was a more aggressive form or appeared to be a more aggressive form of prostate cancer,” Dan Zenka, Prostate cancer patient told Ivanhoe.

Dan knows a lot about prostate cancer, he’s senior vice president of communications at the Prostate Cancer Foundation. He’s well aware that one in six men will be diagnosed with the disease in their lifetime.

“I knew the chances were good that I might be hearing those very words someday myself,” Zenka said.

The PSA test is the most common way to screen for prostate cancer. But the test can result in a high number of false positives and false negatives – causing unnecessary treatments and missed diagnoses. Now, urologists say that a new test, called the pro PSA test, better detects aggressive cancer and reduces false positives.

“The pro PSA test is more accurate than anything that is currently available,” William Catalona, M.D., a urologist at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine told Ivanhoe.

PSA or prostate specific antigen is found in the blood. High levels of PSA could indicate prostate cancer. The new test measures a more specific form of PSA in the blood.

“That specifically is a better marker for prostate cancer than the other forms of PSA that have been previously developed,” Dr. Catalona said.

The new test measures blood levels of three different types of PSAs. Combined with annual biopsies, or tissue samples, it was about 70 percent accurate in singling out the aggressive tumor. The pro PSA level is turning out to be a more valuable predictor for prostate cancer.

“It can give you a more accurate estimate of whether or not he has prostate cancer, and whether or not the prostate cancer is one of those that would be potentially life threatening,” Dr. Catalona added. Read more here:

We will now await when and whether this new PSA Pro method will be approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration. They say it has already been approved in Europe, so that’s a good sign.

So, there you go - New More Effective PSA Test Method For Detecting Prostate Cancer!

Prostate cancer is however not the only disorder that may develop in the prostate. More common in fact is the disease called benign prostate hyperplasia, also known simply as prostate enlargement (or an enlarged prostate). This one occurs in up to 80 percent of men that make it to over 70 years old, and generally causes their prostate glands to grow up to seven or eight times their normal size.

The early signs of prostate problems are therefore the same symptoms that a man should look out for. For instance, he should be conscious of the fact that he is urinating more as he grows older. Although this is common enough in all aging men, when it is accompanied by pain in urination, there is likely a problem.

BPH can cause nighttime urination and a feeling or urgency to urinate, while also causing difficulty emptying the bladder and a weak urinary stream. These symptoms are warning signs that one will come across when dealing with advancing prostate cancer.

Other early signs that may indicate the coming of a prostate problem are pelvic pain, problems with urination, discomfort after ejaculation, and lower back pain. They may also include infection, swelling, pain, and difficulty in urinating; the penis may release bacterial fluid, and blood may appear in the urine. These are generally symptoms of prostatitis, which may be bacterial in nature, or nonbacterial. In some cases bacterial prostatitis may even cause severe infections throughout the body, producing a dangerously high fever.

It pays to pay attention to these warning signs because that may be what saves one’s life. An early diagnosis of the disease, whatever it is, is critical to treating it. It may not be prostate cancer, but one such infection is sufficient to increase the risk of prostate cancer several fold. And should the symptoms be those of prostate cancer, well, the sooner the treatment starts, the better.

But concerning prostate cancer, a man should get examined at least once a year in order to catch the disease before it spreads, instead of waiting for the Early Signs Of Prostate Problems.