Jul
18
Prostatitis Terminology Glossary.
July 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Glossary
ACUTE - Often used to describe a disorder, or symptom, that comes on suddenly. An acute condition may or may not be severe, but it is usually of short duration.
ANDROGENS - Bodily hormones that help in the development of male sex characteristics. Testosterone is the most important of these.
ANUS - The exterior opening, through which waste products are excreted, located at the end of the digestive tract.
BACTERIA - A group of single-celled micro-organisms, many -though not all - of which cause diseases.
BENIGN - Not malignant. Characteristic of a mild illness. Recovery is likely.
BIOPSY - The removal of tissue from a patient so that it may be
studied under a microscope in order to make a precise diagnosis.
BLADDER - An elastic sac that stores urine before it is excreted from the body.
BOGGY - A term used to describe the prostate when it is swollen, spongy and soft.
CANCER - A group of diseases in which symptoms are due to the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells creating a cellular tumour. These cells can spread throughout the body through the bloodstream or the lymphatic system.
CAPSULE - The structure in which an item, such as the prostate, is enclosed.
CATHETER - A hollow, flexible, surgical tube that is used to drain or inject fluid. It is used, in particular, to drain urine via the urethra from the bladder.
CAT SCAN (CT SCAN) - A diagnostic imaging technique using X-rays and computer technology to provide cross-sectional pictures of the body.
CHLAMYDIA - A group of non-bacterial infections in the urethra and genital tract, and one of the most common sexually-transmitted diseases.
CHRONIC - A chronic condition is one that persists fora long time (sometimes in spite of treatment).
CYSTOSCOPE - A lighted viewing instrument that is inserted up the urethra in order to examine the urethra and the bladder.
DYSURIA - Pain on passing urine.
EJACULATION - The act of emission of semen from the penis.
ENZYME - A protein that regulates the rate of a chemical reaction in the body. Every cell in the body produces various enzymes.
ERECTION - The stiffening, hardening and elevation that occur in the penis in response to sexual arousal.
FREQUENCY - The need to urinate at short intervals.
GENITALS - The reproductive organs - both male and female, both internal and external.
GENITO-URINARY - Referring to a man’s or woman’s reproductive and urinary tract.
GLAND - A group of specialised cells that manufacture and release certain chemicals, including hormones and enzymes, for use in the body.
HAEMATURIA - Blood in the urine.
HAEMOSPERMIA - Blood in the seminal fluid.
HESITANCY - Slowness to start the initial urinary flow.
HORMONE - A chemical that is released into the bloodstream by a particular gland or tissue and which has a specific effect on tissues elsewhere in the body.
HYPERPLASIA - Cell proliferation.
HYPERTROPHY - The excessive, abnormal growth of an organ.
IMPOTENCE - Inability to achieve a good enough erection for sexual intercourse.
INCONTINENCE, URINARY - Inability to control the passing of urine.
INTERMITTENCY - Stopping and starting the flow of urine, often resulting in an inability to empty the bladder completely.
INTRAVENOUS PYELOGRAM (IVP) - Also known as urography.
• diagnostic procedure for taking X-ray pictures of the urinary tract.
• dye - or, to give its proper name, a radio-opaque medium - is injected intravenously into the bloodstream, which then shows up on X-rays when it is excreted by the kidneys, ureter and bladder.
KIDNEYS - Two small organs located on either side of the spinal column. Impurities in the blood are removed in the kidneys and dissolved to form urine.
LASER - An acronym, which stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Laser beams, which are concentrations of light and heat, can be used to cut, and are now being employed increasingly in surgery.
LIBIDO - Sexual desire.
MALIGNANT - Not benign. Cancerous, with the ability to invade other tissues, and to spread, or metastasise, throughout the body.
METASTASIS - A resulting cancer that has spread from another part of the body. Metastases are spread by the bloodstream or the lymph system.
MID-STREAM URINE (MSU) - A urine sample is taken mid-way in the flow of urination - neither at the beginning nor at the end, which gives less opportunity for contamination from surrounding tissues. This gives the best sample for culture or analysis.
NOCTURIA - The urge to urinate during the night, which wakes you up and means you have to get up to go to the toilet. Normally, the kidneys will produce less urine during the night when you are asleep, and the bladder will not signal that it is full until the morning. If the bladder is irritable, however, or if there is residual urine left over in the bladder, a man will be woken by the sensation of a full bladder.
ORCHIDECTOMY - The surgical removal of one or both testicles.
ORGASM - The ultimate climax of the sexual act. In a man, ejaculation normally occurs at this point.
PEAK URINE FLOW - The maximum urine flow that a man can produce, measured in millilitres per second.
PERINEUM - The area between the scrotum and anus.
PROSCAR (Finasteride) - A popular prosratitis treatment prescription drug. You can buy it online without a prescription. Generic Proscar is available in 5mg pills. Purchase Finasteride (generic Proscar) at a very affordable price.
PROSTATECTOMY - The surgical removal of all or part of the prostate gland.
PROSTATE GLAND - Male gland, about the size of a chestnut, through which the urethra, or urinary pipe, passes.
RADIATION - Energy that is emitted in the form of waves or particles of light. Used in medicine for both diagnosis and treatment.
RADIOTHERAPY - The use of radiation in medicine for the treatment of disease, usually cancer.
RESECTOSCOPE - A surgical instrument that allows the surgeon to see inside the urethra and is used in a transurethral prostatectomy (TURP).
SCROTUM - The pouch at a man’s crotch containing the testicles.
SEMEN - The fluid that is produced by the male on ejaculation.
SEMINAL FLUID - The fluid that is emitted by the penis when a man ejaculates.
SECRETIONS - The manufacture and release by a gland, cell or organ of chemical substances.
SEXUALLY-TRANSMITTED DISEASE - One of the many diseases that can be transmitted through sexual relations. Used to be known as venereal disease.
SITZ BATH - A sit-down bath, which can be beneficial to people suffering from rectal and urinary problems.
SPERM - The male sex cell produced by the testes, also known as spermatozoon (singular) or spermatozoa (plural), which can fertilise the female egg, or ovum.
STERILITY - The inability of a man to father children.
TESTICLES - A man’s two reproductive glands located in his scrotum. The testicles produce sperm and androgens (primarily testosterone).
ULTRASOUND - Also known as sonography. A diagnostic technique in which very high frequency sound waves are passed into the body, and reflected echoes are analysed to build up a picture of the internal organs. The procedure is entirely safe, and quite painless.
URETHRA- Urinary pipe which passes through the penis, through which urine passes from the bladder to the outside. Seminal fluids also pass through the urethra during ejaculation.
URINARY FLOW RATE - How quickly urine is voided from the bladder at the peak of urination. If the urinary flow is weaker than normal, it may indicate that there is some urethral obstruction.
URINE - The pale yellow fluid produced by the kidneys, which is excreted four the body via the bladder and the urethra.
URINE CULTURE - The study of a sample of urine to allow the growth of micro-organisms. This allows a urinary tract infection to be identified.
UROLOGIST - Doctor specialising in disorders of the urinary tract and the male genital tract.
VASECTOMY - Male sterilisation, performed by cutting through the vas deferens on each side of the body, which carry sperm from the testicles to the urethra.
X-RAY - Probably the best known of all imaging techniques, first discovered by Wilhelm Konrad Rbntgen in 1895. It is a useful diagnostic procedure, using electromagnetic radiations of short wave length, which produce high-quality images of bones, organs and internal tissues.
Jul
14
PROSTATE CANCER
July 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment
PROSTATE CANCER
Cancer is the word that has brought agonizing pain and terror to the last half of the twentieth century. To most people cancer means death. Many still think that a man with cancer has a death sentence. Not true. Increasingly in this last decade of the century it is proving not necessarily so. There are hundreds of different kinds and types of cancers, the medical experts tell us, and some can and are being cured. One of those types of cancer strikes men in their prostate. Cancer is described as being an uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells. Cancer cells can spread quickly throughout the body through the blood stream and the lymph system. Wherever they lite they create new tumors that begin replacing the normal tissue.
Some types don’t move at all, some are aggressive and attack different parts of the body quickly first. Cancer can develop in the lymphatic system, in bones, a man’s lungs, chest, throat, colon, stomach, even his brain. One of the areas cancer hits in a man is his prostate. When cancer strikes a man’s prostate it is usually what doctors call a primary cancer. This simply means the cancer begins, originates, in the prostate and has not been transported there from some other cancer in another part of the body.
WHAT CAUSES PROSTATE CANCER?
Scientists say there are hundreds of different kinds of cancer and they undoubtedly are caused by hundreds of different inciters. A few of the cancers have been researched enough so the medical people have the beginnings of the causes of them and can then go ahead and utilize some kind of anti-body to stop or kill the cancer. Massive research is going on for many forms of cancer, but less than one percent of that work is being done on prostate cancer. What this says is that there probably won’t be a miracle cure for prostate cancer within the lifetimes of most of us. That, like some of the preventive inoculation vaccines we have, will have to be applied to our children or our grandchildren. So who can develop prostate cancer? Unlike smoking and lung cancer, there isn’t even a hint of what might cause prostate cancer. Most researchers have ruled out any of the usual work and behavior activities such as alcohol, diet, work place, smoking, venereal diseases, too much sex or too little, or any other currently defined lifestyle.
There is one exception: men who work in nearly constant exhaust fumes from cars and those exposed to cadmium in the work place, are found to be at slightly higher risks of prostate cancer than the rest of us.
The one constant in prostate cancer and man seems to be age. As with the enlargement of the prostate, cancer seems to strike older men. Yes, some men die of prostate cancer in their forties, but most of the confrontations with the disease comes when men are over sixty. One researcher reports that the average age of men who are diagnosed as having cancer is seventy-two. Slightly over eighty percent of all prostate cancers reported come in men who are over the age of sixty-five.
Most doctors understand that by the age of eighty, nearly eighty percent of men have cancer of the prostate to some degree too. It may have been dormant for years, or it may just be starting and of a type that will grow slowly. Most of these men will never develop any symptoms of prostate cancer and will die of some cause not related to their prostate.
Most of our readers probably know someone who either has prostate cancer or has died of it. The American Cancer Society says that one out of eleven Americans will develop cancer of the prostate during his lifetime. Nearly 100,000 prostate cancer cases are reported by doctors each year. With men living longer now each year, there is expected to be an increasing number of prostate cancers. Men are simply living longer now and that’s when the disease develops. The American Cancer Society reports that nearly 28,000 men died of prostate cancer last year.
WHAT CAN THE AVERAGE MAN DO?
The problem is far from hopeless. They key to any cancer, and especially prostate cancer, is to catch the problem as early as possible. Some urologists suggest that all men over forty should have a digital rectal examination once a year.
Most of these examinations will be negative, which is good news to the man examined. We do dozens of examinations each year on people and expect negative results. Cholesterol testing is done routinely on people in their twenties and thirties, but the problem usually isn’t critical until much later in life. Chest X-rays are done routinely with usually a 99% negative result.
Testing for prostate cancer should be as routine for all men over forty. Yes, it’s a bit uncomfortable, but not painful. It takes about three minutes in a doctor’s office. Some urologists say the digital exam of the upper two lobes of the prostate will reveal ninety percent of prostate cancer. Other urologists think this is a bit high, but the exam should be made.
If such exams could catch 50% of starting prostate cancers in an early stage, most of those could be cured completely.
The big problem with prostate cancer is that it is a silent killer. It can show no symptoms at first. By the tune it starts hurting, the cancer usually has spread into other parts of the body and it’s often a matter of time until it kills the patient.
SCARE TACTICS?
If your reading this book does nothing more than makes you decide to have a yearly physical examination including a digital rectal exam of the prostate, that will be reward enough. You could be saving your life with a digital examination by discovering a cancer early enough to cure it.
Right now, about sixty-four percent of prostate cancers are discovered while they are small. Of these men, almost eighty-four percent are still alive five years after their surgery. Doctors compile statistics on cancer patients and most consider a man cured after a 15 year free period. The secret is catching it early so all of the cancerous tissue can be removed so it can’t spread or grow again. Ann Landers in her syndicated column has repeatedly pushed for greater awareness of testing to catch early cancer development. In one recent column she urged women to do the job this way. Whenever they go in for a mammogram, usually once a year, they should make an appointment for their husband to have his prostate checked by a digital exam or by the more expensive ultrasound probe. She urges women to do this so they won’t become premature widows. The lady has a good idea.
The American Cancer Society reports that currently seventy-one percent of all patients with cancer of the prostate live for five years or more after treatment. That’s for all cases whether diagnosed early or late. The later the diagnosis, the worse the chance for a cure.
HOW DOES YOUR DOCTOR KNOW IT’S CANCER?
More and more these days there is a push to try to catch prostate cancer in its earliest stages. This is a difficult job because very small cancers in the prostate traditionally have been from hard to impossible to detect by the traditional digital exam.
Now there are new tools to use to find these cancers. One of the best may be a simple blood test called the PSA. That stands for Prostate Specific Antigen. Prostate antigen is a protein found only in the prostate tissue. It has long been known that when the prostate is cancerous, the antigen level is elevated. The problem has been in finding how much this elevation may be made when the cancers are small and can’t be felt digitally.Now with the PSA there has been enough research to make some general pointings.
The tests showed that in the BPH men when the level of antigen had risen to 4 units, BPH was likely by a ratio of 4 to 1. But when the antigen level lifted to 10 or more units, the likelihood of cancer was more likely by a ratio of 33 to 1. Cooner also suggests the use of prostate ultrasonography as another diagnostic tool for screening patients who fall in the over 50 year category. This is done with a probe in the rectum and the use of ultrasound to reveal the tissue and mass in the prostate area.
Cooner concludes in his paper that we need to employ these two tools in a try to improve the ability to find curable cancers before they cause pain. He suggests that all men over 50 years should have a digital rectal elimination, then a PSA blood test, and a prostate ultrasound sonogram done as a baseline for future comparisons.
At this time PSA looks like a tool that the urologists need to make more use of. What if it only catches two or three percent of early cancer cases. Those men, cured of their cancer, are going to be wildly enthusiastic about the benefits of the test. As a parallel, how many positive readings do physical exams get these days from a routine chest X-ray? A dramatically low percentage.