Conquer Prostate Cancer Now

Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) Test Still the Best

The other day I read about a 60 year old man's triumphant statement that he's glad he skipped his PSA test this year. He was glad he didn't get screened to determine if his PSA reading went up. He stated this in view of new European and American studies that concluded that PSA tested men didn't have a significantly greater mortality rate due to prostate cancer when compared to non-tested men.

Detecting Prostate Cancer

 

 

Editorial Note: Recently one of our readers asked if a patient, on his own, might detect any noticeable symptoms indicating the possible presence of prostate cancer, even before visiting a urologist for testing. Here is a response from one of our site's medical consultants, urologist Dr. David Kauder, M.D.    -Rabbi Ed, Moderator, ConquerProstateCancerNow.com

 

A number of people think they do not have to go to the doctor unless there is something wrong with them.  Unfortunately, thoughts about preventive medicine have been bludgeoned out of most people’s minds by a wrongly incentivized healthcare system.  Ah! but that was not the question!  So here goes:

Prostate Cancer Diagnosis -- Are There Any Symptoms?

Question:

Are there symptoms between annual checkups by my urologist, that I should take as a warning of prostate cancer or the need for prostate cancer treatment?

                                                                             Ernie S.

Answer:

Technically this is a medical question about how prostate cancer can be diagnosed, and I am not licensed to practice medicine! So perhaps one of our site's two medical consultants will follow up on my response here. Meantime for other doctors' views see www.medicinenet.com/prostate_cancer/page3.htm.

I can answer you from my my personal experience and research, including interviewing other prostate cancer survivors I profiled in my book. In general most of us had no previous symptoms, but found out about our disease only during annual visits with our doctors. I was an exception to that rule, as i'll explain shortly.