What to do if you have prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is the most common malignant tumor in the male reproductive system. It is reported that the mortality rate of prostate cancer ranks second only to lung cancer in the ranking of male cancer mortality. Genetics is the main cause, so when there is a patient with prostate cancer in the family, you should pay attention to prevention. So what should you do if you have prostate cancer? Let's introduce the treatment methods of prostate cancer.

There are several treatments for prostate cancer, but they vary from person to person.
1. Watchful waiting in the early stages of prostate cancer Watchful waiting means that after the diagnosis of prostate cancer, no treatment intervention is used, but the patient is closely followed up and observed. Once the patient shows signs of disease progression such as elevated PSA, other means of treatment will be used to treat the patient. Currently, there is controversy among both patients and doctors about the treatment option of watchful waiting. Generally, patients who adopt this method should be older than 70 years old, with low tumor stage, well-differentiated tumor, and life expectancy of less than 10 years.
2. Radiotherapy includes external radiotherapy and internal radiotherapy. External radiotherapy now mainly refers to three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy, which is a painless treatment performed in an outpatient clinic and has the same therapeutic effect as radical prostatectomy. Its advantage is that the therapeutic rays are more concentrated on the prostate being treated, reducing the impact on surrounding tissues. External radiotherapy can cause acute cystitis, prostatitis and enteritis.
3. Hormone therapy All treatments that reduce the level of androgen in the blood are called hormone therapy. Because the occurrence and development of prostate cancer is closely related to androgens, treatment that blocks or reduces androgens can significantly reduce tumor size, reduce tumor growth rate and metastasis, but it cannot cure prostate cancer. For early prostate cancer, hormone therapy is rarely needed. However, in some special cases, such as advanced age, patients who do not accept radical surgery or have other serious diseases, conservative treatment is required and hormone therapy can be considered.
4. Radical surgery refers to surgical treatment in which the entire prostate and bilateral seminal vesicles are removed. Radical prostatectomy is the first choice for radical treatment of early prostate cancer. Generally, patients who are estimated to be cured before surgery, with an expected life expectancy of more than 10 years and good tumor staging and grading are selected for radical prostatectomy. The advantage of radical prostatectomy is that it is a method that can remove prostate tumors, thereby having a positive psychological effect on patients. Complications of radical prostatectomy include urinary incontinence, urethral stenosis, erectile dysfunction, etc. With the development of technology, minimally invasive surgery can now be performed with the help of laparoscopes and robots.
Finally, experts remind all patients: In order to effectively treat prostate cancer, you should first actively avoid re-stimulation of the inducement and actively carry out treatment.