Medical Questions » Prostate Gland Questions » Question No. 817
| Question: | My doctor has told me that I have cancer of the prostate, but doesn' t seem too worried about it, but I am! How serious is this? Can it be cured? |
| Answer: | The prostate gland sits inside the body at the base of the penis, and secretes a fluid that lubricates the urine tube from the bladder through the penis, and supplies part of the man' s ejaculate during sex. Cancer can develop in this organ, but it occurs normally in old men and early signs include difficulty in passing urine, pain and bloody urine.
The seriousness of this (and most other cancers) depends on how far advanced it is when the diagnosis is made and treatment started. Doctors consider a five year survival after diagnosis to be equivalent to cure, and with cancer of the prostate, 70% of all patients survive for five years. If the diagnosis is made early, the survival rate exceeds 90%.
Treatments will involve one or more of several different medications, surgery to remove all or part of the prostate, radiotherapy (high intensity x-rays), removal of the testes (to stop the male hormone being produced that encourages the cancer to grow) and female hormone tablets.
It is possible that your cancer was diagnosed during an operation to clear a blocked urethra (urine tube). This operation, carried out by passing an instrument up from the end of the urethra, is the most common way in which this type of cancer is found, and if only a small number of cancer cells were detected, the operation you have already had may have cured the cancer.
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