Hi Shaun
Gosh....We are getting younger!
The first thing is DON'T PANIC!
This is the start of a long journey...like MOST MEN on this planet...it is an epidemic!
You will need (like your Doctor) a LOT of data (MRI/CT/Bone Scan/Biopsy) before YOU can logically choose YOUR path of treatment (there are several)...your "little high" PSA is simply YOUR very first baby step.
Here is something that helped me a lot when I found that I had this thing a few months ago:
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One of the world’s leading experts in the care of PC — Dr Laurence Klotz — wrote the following words to help describe both a) the initial fear you might be concerned about, and b) what you might not realize about prostate cancer. He wrote:
"A diagnosis of cancer often results, at least initially, in “cancer hysteria” — that is, a perfectly understandable reflexive fear of an aggressive life-threatening condition. Historically, a diagnosis of cancer
was a death sentence. In Western society at large, the cancer “zeitgeist” is that this disease is dreadful and must be caught early and treated aggressively to avoid what would otherwise be a painful and premature
death. This widely shared preconception often leads the patient to make a quick and early decision for treatment, regardless of the risks and benefits.
For some cancers this fear is warranted, but for most men with favorable-risk prostate cancer, their condition is far removed from that of a rampaging, aggressive disease. Most men with favorable-risk prostate
cancer are not destined to die of their disease, even in the absence of treatment. The challenge is to identify the subset that harbour more aggressive disease early enough that curative therapy is still a
possibility, thereby allowing the others to enjoy improved quality of life, free from the side effects of treatment."
Let’s be clear… there ARE serious cases, very serious cases, of PC. But as Dr Klotz wrote, most are NOT in that category, although today we label them all the same: “prostate cancer.”
Not all PC is created equal, nor is it identified at the same level of maturity in all patients, let alone at the same age; therefore it is important to understand the ‘Stage’ of the cancer you have (or may have). Unfortunately, the medical/research profession mixes the definitions and simplifications it uses for mortality (death from the disease) by using the confusing terms 'Risk' and ‘Stage’.
The two measures are closely but not 100% aligned; PC 'Stage' (a measure of the 'now' situation), feeds in to the 'Risk' categorization (how things may progress). In simple terms, earlier 'Stages' define more localized cancer, generally associated with lower 'Risk' and this is where the largest percentage of cases occur. It is important to understand where you stand on both scales (see the first post in this thread).
To keep this simple and to fulfill my purpose I have taken and summarized two credible sources of morbidity data based upon 'Stage' and presented them here.
'Average' is an important concept to remember; clinical studies are invariably reporting some form of average; there are always members of the study that fared better or worse by greater or lesser degrees; for a variety of disease related, overall state of health and lifestyle reasons.
Survival Rates by Stage of Disease
The most widely used standardized staging system for prostate cancer is the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) TNM system. The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) maintains a large national database on survival statistics for different types of cancer, known as the SEER database. The SEER database does not group cancers by AJCC stage, but instead groups cancers into simpler local, regional, and distant ‘Stages’ (actually groups of TNM Stages).
- Local stage means that there is no sign that the cancer has spread outside of the prostate. This corresponds to AJCC stages I and II. about 4 out of 5 prostate cancers are found in this early stage. The 5 year survival rate for this group is nearly 100%.
- Regional stage means the cancer has spread from the prostate to nearby areas. This includes stage III cancers and the stage IV cancers that haven’t spread to distant parts of the body, such as T4 tumors and cancers that have spread to nearby lymph nodes (N1). The 5 year survival rate for this group is also nearly 100%.
- Distant stage includes the rest of the stage IV cancers – cancers that have spread to distant lymph nodes, bones, or other organs (M1). The 5 year survival rate for this group is 28%.
Why 5 years? It’s a BENCHMARK, an arbitrarily chosen point in time at which a measurement is made. At five years they count the number of men who have died so far, and the number who are still alive, all of them having received treatment 5 years ago. It is something of a standardized ‘first point of measurement’ across many studies and has no hidden meaning. Studies that follow men longer will also take a count at 10 years and 15.
As you can see, nearly every man with prostate cancer in Stages I, II, III and even some IV’s will live past this point and have his sights set on the future. As can also be seen, an advanced Stage IV patient has a fight on his hands, but all is certainly not lost.
What Next?
According to the most recent data cited by the American Cancer Society, when including all stages of prostate cancer:
- The relative 5-year survival rate is almost 100%
- The relative 10-year survival rate is 99%
- The 15-year relative survival rate is 94%
That's even better news, isn't it?
In a good way, these figures are already outdated. Prostate cancer treatments are continually improving. Men diagnosed with prostate cancer today might have even better survival rates. For example, the five-year relative survival rate for men diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1990 was 92.9%, in 2013 it was 99%.
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Best of luck and keep us informed!
Bill
Edited by member 04 May 2016 at 17:32
| Reason: Not specified