PSA Controversy

 Should You or Shouldn't You PSA Controversy?

Prostate Cancer

For the last 20 years PSA test have been suggested for all men over 50 years old. A PSA test is a blood test that is used to find the level of prostate-specific antigens in the blood stream. Abnormal amounts of this antigen can represent the onset prostate cancer. This practice has been the standard, but new data and research is showing that mass PSA testing doesn't have any effect on the death rate of men who have prostate cancer. The controversy with PSA testing is that they may result in overzealous treatment that can leave men infertile or impotent. Some findings also say that the cancers that are found through PSA might find slow growing cancer that takes decades to develop, and that most men within this age range would die of natural causes or some other disease before this slow growing prostate cancer will have time to develop. The new studies show that men who wait until they have actual symptoms of prostate cancer share the same exact mortality rate as men who have had routine PSA tests.

As a medical billing test this has direct implications. Insurance companies and HMO's may no longer pay for PSA testing and speculative biopsies. Urologist and Primary care Doctor's might have to stop suggesting these test and procedures for their patients because they will no longer be covered under future insurance plan. Getting doctors paid for these services will become difficult. The research behind these new findings followed over 70,000 men 50 years and older and this test are said to have very little use. One rebuttal to these findings might be the constant lower death rate from prostate cancer. Deaths from prostate cancer decrease an average of 4% every year. One might posit that PSA test might not help an aggregate of men, but the test is worth giving because it helps a small amount of men survive prostate cancer.

Instead of recommending PSA testing for all men, Doctors might want to start taking advantage of Digital Rectum Exams. These exams can be performed less frequently and will still provide early detection of tumor growth without all the false flags that PSA testing gives. Digital Rectum Exams will still be billable to insurance companies and HMO. The key is finding out what is best for the patient and secondly what the insurance companies and HMO's will actually pay for. It is unfortunate that health care is such a business, but medical billing services must know what they can actually bill. What we hope to see are a list of services, test, and procedures that physicians are allowed to give.

These changes have not yet been put in place, but many patients are doing their own due diligence and are learning about the unreliability of PSA test. There might also be a group of patients who demand these tests and procedures. The world of prostate screening is changes - not much for the better, but towards the truth. We hope to see new procedure that helps save more lives.

Premature Stage Prosatate Cancer .

 Premature Stage Prostate Cancer Treatment:

Prostate Cancer

The prostate is located at the base of the bladder. It sits atop the urethra and has two lobes that encircle it. These lobes have muscle tissue that allows you to regulate the flow of your urine. The prostate produces seminal fluid which is used to carry sperm during orgasm.

Prostate cancer affects the activities of the prostate beginning in what experts refer to as stage T2. At this point the early signs of prostate cancer may begin to appear:

• Difficulty with starting or stopping urine flow
• Inability to urinate
• Weak or feeble urine flow
• Urination more frequently, especially at night
• The need to urinate is intense
• Pain during urination and ejaculation
• Blood in semen or urine

No physical symptoms appear during stage T1 when the cancer is in its earliest stages. Medical personnel and researchers are unanimous in the assertion that a patient's best chance for a complete recovery is to begin treatment while the cancer is in stages T1 or T2 while the disease is confined to the prostate gland and has not yet spread to the surrounding tissue. After the cancer has grown beyond the prostate, treatments currently available cannot affect a cure. The disease can only be slowed to a degree.

Surgery

Surgery has been the most commonly diagnosed treatment for men suffering from prostate cancer for many decades. There are 3 surgical procedures used for prostate cancer. Which one is recommended to you by your doctor will depend on your specific case.

A prostatectomy is done to remove the prostate. A pelvic lymph node dissection is done to remove the lymph nodes. A transurethral resection is carried out to relieve the symptoms associated with an enlarged prostate that is blocking the urethra. Sections of the prostate are removed through the urethra.

For each of these operations, a hospital stay and general anesthetic are required. Side effects from these treatments often include urinary incontinence and impotence.

External Beam Radiation Therapy

For this procedure a radioactive source is focused on your pelvic region to burn away diseased cells. It is carried out on an out-patient basis for 5 consecutive days for each of 5 consecutive weeks.

Side effects may include chronic pelvic pain, impotence and radiation burns to tissue surrounding the prostate.

High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU)

The concept behind this procedure is to use ablation to remove cancerous cells. Ablation is to remove a substance using heat and evaporation. Cells infected with the cancer are identified and isolated using an MRI. When the diseased cells have been targeted, they are heated using sound ultrasound waves. The procedure is non-surgical and non-invasive, using a computer controlled rectal probe. The trained urological surgeon controls the focused ultrasound via a computer screen and sensors on the probe. The ultrasound waves are extremely focused to target a small area with each pulse, and so are controlled to eliminate only the diseased cells on the prostate. Healthy cells adjacent to the tumor are usually unaffected by the focused pulse. This procedure can target the whole of the prostate gland in approximately 3 hours.

During this procedure you are given a local anesthetic and a general anesthetic. When it's finished you can go home with no dietary restrictions; of course any dietary recommendations made by your family doctor should still be followed. Blather HIFU can offer a cure rate in excess of 90%.

 Men over 50 should get regular prostate exams and screening since early detection is essential for cure.

Reward Prostate Cancer

 

 The Reward in me!

As the New Year dawned, an astonishing article in the Australian press proclaimed that cancer had outstripped heart disease as the number one killer in the country. This is quite astounding. What has been going on to cause such a turnaround? "Why”, Prostate Cancer is a particularly pertinent question, yet it is rarely asked!

Many believe the diagnosis of cancer is a mandatory death sentence. This is simply not true. In its estimations for 2012, the American Cancer Society named prostate cancer as the most common type and projects that there will be 241, 740 cases during the year. Of all of these, 28,170 men are expected to die, as a result. That means 213,570 will survive. That gives a survivability rate of approximately 80%. This is a far cry from an automatic death sentence! True, the chances of death from some other types of the disease such as pancreatic cancer are significantly greater.

Martin Silverman was diagnosed with testicular cancer when he was seventeen. His gonads swelled to the size of an orange, overnight. His mother acted promptly, so he was seen by a specialist within two days. An aggressive teatime was diagnosed resulting in surgery two days after that. This was followed by a course of radiation, and he was then fine!

Two years ago, or 37 years after the original event Martin went for a blood test to screen for diabetes that ran in his family. In Britain, the Health Service also performs a battery of additional tests from the blood sample. He did not have diabetes but instead had a PSA reading of 63. PSA stands for "prostate specific antigen"; a level in excess of four suggests the possibility of prostate cancer. Martin was almost 16 times over that limit. When faced with the side effects resulting from the conventional medical treatment for prostate cancer, he was nervous about entering allopathic care. However, at the outset his oncologist talked him into taking hormone pills, but he alarmingly found he was developing breasts. He stopped treatment and embraced a holistic route instead.

He realized his diseases both developed within two years of a break-up of an intimate relationship. This he saw was no coincidence on realizing that it was the reproductive system that was affected. This coincides with the findings of Dr. Girt Hammer, the founder of "Germanic New Medicine". Dr. Hammer developed testicular cancer two years after his son was murdered. After years of investigation and many CT scans to support his thesis, he stated that "all illness" was the result of a stressful event that caused a lesion to grow in the brain. The area of the brain affected, impacted directly on a specific place in the body. In this case, the relevant area involves the testicles in men and the ovaries in women. The traumatic event itself involves a profound loss conflict.

Martin worked to quell the resulting emotional issues, but the first key change on his route to holism was a radical alteration in diet. He fully grasped that the average western nutrition and lifestyle pattern were a way of committing slow suicide. Out went the staples of bread and meat and in came living raw foods. His journey was much influenced by the Hippocrates Health Institute located in Florida. This was co-founded by the late Anne Wig more who cured herself of cancer by taking wheat grass juice and enzyme rich, raw foods. Martin feels wheatgrass juice tastes awful but as all pet owners will have noticed that their dog or cat goes off and eats grass when feeling unwell. Nobody taught the animal to do this it's instinctual. The same impulse applies to humans, but we have all been educated away from natural cures.

Aside from the juices, Martin includes sprouted seeds and superior quality nutritional supplements into his eating program. He adds coconut water to this, saying it is like drinking hemoglobin. He eradicates fruit as it is too sugary. Sugar is believed to be the main food for cancer cells. Such a diet provides him with all his nutritional requirements and he is now a picture of glowing good health.

Martin is in the process of writing a book called "The Gift in me". He is doing this because most men are seriously out of touch when it comes to health issues. This is especially true in the realm of the emotions. Women are much better at dealing with these issues, and so he decided to write a book written by a man who reaches out to other men confronted by similar challenges. If you feel that this will help, look out for his "The Gift in Me “scheduled to launch soon.

 Prostate Cancer Treatment:

Prostate Cancer Treatments

Of the prostate cancer treatments available, your doctor will recommend the treatment option that is best for you. The decision will depend on your overall health and how far advanced your cancer is. If the Prostate Cancer treatment recommended for you is not something you're comfortable with, for instance you may not be comfortable with external beam radiation therapy; you can give your doctor your opinion. It's important that you are at ease with the decision. Discuss it with your family as well, particularly the possible side effects and cure rate.

Oncologists specialize in certain fields. The one you are referred to will be a specialist in the treatment prescribed for you.

Watching and Waiting

The first strategy in most treatment plans is watching and waiting. The signs and symptoms that may indicate prostate cancer are also indications of other problems such as an infection in or close to your prostate. Watching and waiting is to determine which condition your symptoms are from.

During this period, blood samples will be tested for PSA levels and tissue samples may be sent for a biopsy. Elevated levels of the prostate specific antigen may point to a less serious medical problem. This is why a tissue sample may be taken; to verify or to rule out the presence of cancer. Remember that early treatment usually has a better possibility of cure.

Surgery

Men who are the best candidates for prostate cancer surgery are the ones most likely to achieve a successful recovery from the procedure. These are men with good overall health and who do not have secondary conditions that may interfere with recovery like heart problems. Surgery can lead to some serious side effects including incontinence and impotence.

Radiation

There are 3 different types of radiation therapies. External beam therapy is typically a stream of X-rays aimed at your pelvis from a device outside the body. The X-rays burn away cancer cells through repeated treatments over several weeks.

An alternative external beam therapy is Proton Beam Therapy. Instead of using X-rays, protons, which are charged particles or ions, are streamed at your pelvis, again from a device outside your body.

Brach therapy is the introduction of several radioactive seeds directly into your prostate. They are implanted with a series of injections while you are under a general anesthetic.

All of the radiation treatments above work on the principle of burning cancer cells away with high energy particles. Radiation treatment can take place over time, and is subject to the same side effects as surgery.

Hormone Therapies

Hormone therapy is a method of chemical treatment that seeks to alter your hormone levels to halt or slow the growth of cancer cells. This procedure is temporary because most patients develop a resistance to the effectiveness of the injections after about 2 years.

Hormone therapy is not a cure and is usually recommended when the patient has a higher stage (T-3 or T-4) of prostate cancer. The idea is to prolong the patient's life and slow the cancer's growth.

Cry therapy

Cry therapy is a procedure where, during surgery, your prostate is frozen and then thawed to destroy cancer cells.

HIFU

High Intensity Focused Ultrasound uses focused ultrasound to heat and evaporate diseased tissue out of your prostate. The device is aimed using an MRI scan and targeted tissue is heated to 80°C. The result is tissue that can no longer reproduce and so cannot grow any further. Healthy tissue is spared because the effective area of the ultrasound pulse is very small and only a few cubic mm at a time can be targeted. It is done on an out-patient basis and does not affect the quality of life that some of the other treatments do. HIFU also results in fewer significant side effects than surgery or radiation. HIFU for prostate cancer is highly effective and can often be used for recurrent cancer. This is not an option, however, once the cancer has spread beyond the prostate.