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Your Prostate Cancer Prognosis Comes
Down To Screening, Staging, and Grading

Don't ask Bobby Maniger about his prostate cancer prognosis. He's too busy living life. You see, about time the 56 year old found out last year that he had early stage cancer of the prostate, the construction site manager was already familiar with the drill. The disease had cut short his father's life. And his two older brothers who had gone through it too.

He was painfully aware that an elevated risk of prostate cancer ran in the family.

He was familiar with the fact that whatever prostate cancer symptoms may show up, they will likely develop too late in the game to be much good with that prognosis thing. Which is what happened to his dad.

He was also grateful for the annual screening for prostate cancer he had undergone faithfully since the age of 43. Knowing as he did that the long term results are best obtained when treating a cancer that is low grade, small, and still localized to the prostate itself. Screening is the best way to discover it at the point when the cure rate is nearly 100%. Screening is what gave him his best chance for survival.

So how can you get up to speed like Bobby? What can you do to keep prostate cancer from wiping out your masculinity? For one you can better understand the things that affect your outlook should you be unlucky enough to develop prostate cancer.

Factors Affecting Any Prostate Cancer Prognosis

It helps if you understand that this is a complicated disease. It's hard to predict with precision how fast or slowly it will develop. But you have to take your best shot at predicting that in order to decide the best course of action to take when it comes to treating it.

Now several factors are likely to affect any prognosis of prostate cancer include prostate cancer stage, prostate cancer grade, and the results from PSA level screening for prostate cancer.

PSA screening is a good way to get the first hint something may be amiss in that prostate gland of yours. It can pick up on indicators of the disease even if you have no symptoms or signs of prostate cancer. As a matter of fact, it is often the first test performed to determine the presence of prostate cancer cells.

Next determining your prostate cancer stage is critical to any prostate cancer prognosis. In particular, the first two stages are likely to yield favorable prognosis since you can expect clinically localized prostate cancer to be manageable either through prostate cancer surgery. radiation therapy, or hormonal therapy among prostate cancer patients. One way or the other the idea is retard the growth of prostate cancer cells through some kind of treatment.

The point being, medical treatments and interventions can be performed to keep the disease from reaching the more life threatening advanced stages.

Finally, prostate cancer grading, just like prostate cancer staging, is another key factor when it comes to determining anyone's prostate cancer prognosis. The procedure helps to estimate the growth rate and rate of metastasis of the cancer cells. More often than not, it is done after a biopsy of sample tissues have been collected.

PSA Level's Role In Any Prostate Cancer Prognosis

PSA Level screening is an important tool that is used to determine the presence of prostate cancer. PSA or protein-specific antigen is commonly released by the prostate gland to carry out key functions in the male reproductive system. In particular, it is a glycoprotein secreted by the prostate gland along with semen for reproductive purposes and functions.

Protein-specific antigen is normally present in small quantities in male serum. Elevated levels, in turn, suggest problems related to prostate cancer or other related prostate conditions (ie prostatitis or BPH). When it comes to protein-specific antigen-based screening, 4-10 mg/ml of PSA in your blood is considered suspicious. If a repeat of the PSA prostate cancer diagnostic test shows similar PSA level elevation your doctor may order a biopsy of the prostate be done. The idea is to dig deeper to further examine the prostate gland cancer cells.

In the United States, annual PSA screening has been approved by US Food and Drug Administration and is recommended to be undergone by men age 50 and older.

TNM Staging For Prostate cancer prognosis

Prostate cancer staging is critical when it comes to determining your prostate cancer prognosis. This is why you need to understand how cancer stages are determined.

WARNING: Numbers are involved here. Your eyes may glaze over. Just try to hang in there to understand this even just a bit.

Okay so among other methods, the TNM method is popular when it comes to determining prostate cancer stages. Which afffects your prostate cancer prognosis. This approach has replaced the traditional ABCD system because it better weighs the various factors associated with each prostate cancer stage.

Just so you know, the TNM staging method stands for Tumor, Nodes, and Metastasis. Taken in combination they give a reading on the severity of the prostate cancer.

For example the size of the tumor (T) is key to gauging the current impact the cancer is having on the prostate gland and its surrounding tissue.

Knowing to what extent cancer cells have spread to the lymph nodes (N) is crucial too.

Finally, metastatic range (M) of the prostate cancer is also important. This goes to how abnormal the cells look when viewed under a microscope. The farther away from normal looking they are, the greater the risk they are fast growing or fast spreading.

The takeaway is there is a way your doctor can measure how far the cancer has spread - if at all. So when you hear TNM staging that's what they're talking about. (If you simply must have more details there's further explanation of what the TNM numbers mean at the bottom of this page.)

Gleason Grading For Prostate Cancer Cell Prognosis

Cancer cell performance, particularly its ability to grow and metastasize, can also be graded fairly accurately. Thanks to the method also known as the Gleason Score Cancer Grading System that is used when trying to measure the aggressiveness of any cancer cells gathered by a biopsy.

The procedure is simply done by assessing abnormal cell structures under the microscope by a pathologist or an equivalent licensed medical professional. Simply put, cell abnormality indicates the aggressiveness of cancer cells or how likely they are to metastasize or spread throughout the body.

Gleason grading commonly determines various types of cells such as very normal and non-aggressive cells and very abnormal and aggressive cells. Cancer cells are graded according to their abnormality and aggressiveness. In the end, a pathologist identifies the top two commonly-occurring cells. The sum of these two cells shall be the final Gleason grade of a prostate cancer patient.

Prostate cancer cells are evaluated in a scale of five, with the lowest being the most favourable grade. Gleason grades one to three suggest uniform cell patterns that are well-defined and well differentiated making them appear like normal prostate tissues. Gleason grades four to seven manifests well or moderately differentiated cells, but not that well-defined. Gleason grades eight to ten sport poorly defined and poorly differentiated cells that are likely abnormal and aggressive.

Prostate Cancer Survival Rates Based on Studies

Based on a study conducted in May 2005, over 90% of men diagnosed with low grade prostate cancer survived for over 20 years simply by doing active surveillance of this situation. The growth of cancer cells in their case appears to be slow, thus the prognosis is better compared to those whose cancer cells have already metastasized to nearby tissues and organs.

Nonetheless, there are many different prostate cancer options available such as surgical procedure, biologic therapy, and hormonal therapy. Many prostate cancer patients favor radiation therapy the most due to its less invasive nature.

Locally advanced prostate cancer can be risky but there is a good chance of survival in the next ten years. A ten year survival rate is recorded among 93% of diagnosed patients annually. Less than 15% mortality rate is observed among 200,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer in the United States each year.

Metastasized prostate cancer that has spread in vital organs yields slim probability of survival. In fact, patients in advanced prostate cancer stages are left with one up to three years of survival, although there are cancer patients who live longer. The key to a better prostate cancer prognosis is to closely monitoring of the condition to avoid organ failure tendencies and other complications.

Seldom Mentioned Prostate Cancer Game Changer

Obviously all these things play a role in bolstering your odds of "beating this thing". The PSA level, Gleason score and other staging metrics help your doctor put a number on your condition. And numbers can help to simplify and clarify a somewhat subjective situation. But there is one other thing that plays a huge role in your long term prognosis. That is the choice of doctor. Regardless which of the prostate cancer treatment options you opt for, the skill and experience of the doc doing the procedure can minimize the side effects, enhance the odds of favorable a outcome and produce your best long term prognosis.

Okay so you don't have a family history of prostate cancer like Bobby Maniger. Still is there any reason you wouldn't want to start monitoring the status of what's going on inside your prostate gland. To give yourself the best possible prostate cancer prognosis should the worst occur?

TNM Explained

You may see this TNM expressed as one of four basic stages.

T1 (tumor has spread to more or less 5% of prostate tissue),
T2 (tumor has spread to prostate lobes),
T3 (tumor has spread to external prostate and seminal tubes), and
T4 (tumor has spread into proximate organs).

Moreover, node status reveals four stages such as

N0 (cancer cells have spread locally),
N2 (cancer cells have spread into pelvic lymph nodes),
N3 (cancer cells measuring less than 5cm have spread into more than one lymph node), and
N4 (cancer cells measuring 5cm or more have spread in multiple lymph nodes).

Metastatic status presents two stages namely
M0 (cancer cells have spread in the pelvic region) and
M1 (cancer cells have spread beyond the pelvic region).

Okay enough of the numbers related to TNM already. Just keep in mind this is a way of measuring things. Not a surefire guanantee one way or the other. But at least maybe now you can see how they fit in with the general evaluation of one's long term prostate cancer prognosis.

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