The treatment of prostate cancer Essay

The life expectancy of prostate cancer patients are based on multiple factors. A person's age, health, stage of cancer, and whether the cancer has metastasized yet will determine the survival rate after a certain amount of years. If it is caught early on, chances are the cancer can be attacked and killed completely without it reoccurring. At this point in medicine, 90% of prostate cancer diagnoses are made within the first stages, so Barbara Wexler says stating in "Chronic Diseases Causes, Treatment, and Prevention" (2010), there is a "five-year relative survival rate for patients whose tumors are diagnosed at these stages approaches 100%" especially if the tumor or cancer cells are localized to just the prostate. The American Cancer Society has also reported that survival rates have increased from around 69% to 99% because there are better ways of detecting it early on.
Prostate cancer can be treated is numerous ways depending on how far you've progressed in stages and whether the cancer cells have spread farther than just the prostate gland. For the very early stages of this cancer, the most commonly taken and best option is radical prostatectomy, which is the removal of the prostate gland and some of the surrounding tissue. The tissue around it includes the seminal glands where sperm is made, causing infertility after surgery ("Prostate", 2007). Another method of treatment for the early stages is radiation or chemotherapy. Using high energy x-rays or drugs to kill or shrink cancer cells is a slow but sometimes effective method to use, especially if the cancerous cells have not spread or metastasized. In the article Chronic Diseases Causes, Treatment, and Prevention (2010), Barbara Wexler also suggests "'watchful waiting' (close observation with no treatment) may also be appropriate in patients who are older or who have less aggressive tumors." If one is in the later stages of cancer, hormone therapy is commonly used to inhibit the amount of male hormones made by the body to stop the growth of androgen- independent cancer cells. This treatment is used when the cells have metastasized to other parts of the body besides the prostate. Prostate cancer has a high survival rate when caught early on, however it is still one of the leading cancers that kill men. Benign and malignant cancer cells damage the glandular tissue in the prostate which causes high levels of protein-specific antigens to spread around the body via blood. That explains why PSA levels are an indicator of prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is not caused by abnormal hormone levels but instead by mutated cells who absorb an abnormal amount of hormones then it should. These cancer cells will eventually clump to create a tumor that will affect a male's urination and ejaculation if it begins to compress on the urethra, which transports urine and sperm. Though prostate cancer is not as harmful to an individual if caught early, it is still very common where almost a quarter of men will be diagnosed with it in their lifetime.