Prostate Cancer

Surely, you get your PSA checked, anyway. Then, depending on the results, you can decide whether to have further investigations. Then, if something shows up, you can decide whether to have treatment.

The medics are well aware that many prostate cancers are slow growing, and they won't push you into unnecessary treatment.

Another friend had his cancerous prostate removed. It makes him semi incontinent. He is in his 80s.

One person I knew who died had the full gamut - he was in his late 40s. Another had massive radiotherapy. Whether he died of prostate cancer or the radiotherapy or the chemotherapy or just being plain old, is a moot point. Another person died of the cancer. Wonderful man. He had a collection of vintage champagne: 'no one in the house likes it, I cant drink it myself - I don't have time, let's have a bottle'. Last time I saw him that was ... Bloody gorgeous. I miss him a lot.

Nope it isn't just something that progresses slowly and doesn't really kill you. And its not easy to wholly eradicate either.

That's a fairly standard age to die of it - 75-95...

My former business partner who must have been in his 40s got it and died of it ten years later. He was a dead keen cyclist. I've always wondered if saddles f*ck yer prostate...

Old limits New limits Noise level Paranoia Where we are today

Yes but if the cancer is known about the patient can be given a drug to slow it down.

Bill

Most don't need it slowed down, it will not kill them, they will die of something else.

Sorry, but of the 4 people I know who had prostate cancer, two died absolutely because of it, one had it removed, and is now incontinent, but alive, and one who had massive radiotherapy died, though possibly not of prostate cancer. Perhaps people have it but don't know it, but if you get symptoms with it, look out.

In message <t0keb6$ti6$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, at 09:43:02 on Sun, 13 Mar

diagnosed

Based on the scores from his biopsy, they put my dad on testosterone blocking injections, he didn't really like the side-effects, a bone scan showed it wasn't spreading, unfortunately something else got him within 2 years.

Jeff Layman presented the following explanation :

Curious, I have never heard of this. When I went for my prostate MRI scan, I remember I was injected on the scanner with something. I requested and was later provided with copies of the images. The images they sent me on CD did not appear very detailed at all, just blurred shapes and blobs. The images covered in course slices, my entire lower body, from abdomen, to tops of legs.

Would that have been an mpMRI, or just a normal MRI.

In article <t0kki6$dan$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Harry Bloomfield Esq snipped-for-privacy@harrym1byt.plus.com> scribeth thus

From the number I've had i suspect that was a;

A multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) scan is a special type of scan that creates more detailed pictures of your prostate than a standard MRI scan. It does this by combining four different types of image.

They aren't that easy to interpret, most MRI scans!..

That injection might have been something like Gadolinium what they call a contrast agent...

According to the ONS, a 70 year old male has a life expectancy of 86 years. Most prostate cancer patients if left untreated will have a longevity of less than 16 years (up to 10 years is typical if diagnosed stage 2 or stage 3, but depends heavily on aggressiveness too), so this simply isn't true. Furthermore, dying from prostate cancer often isn't pleasant or fast and can result in a significant period of poor quality of life before death.

In reality, this should be based on health and life expectation of the individual, and if treatment might benefit them.

We have a protocol for handling patients with prostate cancer who probably wouldn't benefit in longevity from it being treated, called Watchful Waiting. These patients have symptoms monitored and treated to preserve quality of life as much as possible, but generally not any treatments for the cancer itself.

Some treatments become unavailable as you get older, or more strictly, as your longevity reduces. Chemotherapy is rarely used over age 70, and most hospitals have a cut-off of between 70-75 for prostatectomy, but also the requirement of expected longevity of at least 10 years good quality of life. Radiotherapy can be used at any age, although it tends to be avoided in younger patients if there's a viable alternative.

So many men in their 70's benefit from prostate cancer treatment.

Andrew

Prostate cancer doesn't show up well on any type of scan - that's one of its challenges. The Gadolinium is used to detect the different blood supply inside a tumour from that of regular tissue. Tumours cause their own blood supply to grow, but it's haphazard and not well designed like the organ's original blood supply. Indeed tumours often end up with a very poor blood supply in the centre because the outer growth partly strangles it.

The gadolinium is injected quickly so a slug of it hits the prostate (well, all organs). Where the blood supply is good, it's quickly flushed through, but in the tumour where the blood flow tends to be poor, the "flushing rate" is much slower, and this can be seen on the MRI scan.

There is a bit of a move away from Gadolinium in cancer centres which have very good 3T MRI scanners and imaging software, for fear of some rare side effects of the Gadolinium, and Gadolinium can't be used in people with poor kidney function either.

Andrew

Is about the worst advice I've seen on here. And that's saying something.

Quite. One of those things best left to a specialist to help you decide. Not some Oz troll on here.

Brother's pal too at 77. A long and painful death.

That is true, mate of mine had a raised PSA, the GP asked if he had been riding a bike, which he had for a long time, that was apparently the reason for the raised level.