Prostate Cancer

　　What is prostate cancer?

　　Prostate cancer is a malignant tumor develops in prostatic tissues, it is the result of irregular growth of prostatic acinar cells.

　　What is the incidence of prostate cancer?

　　Prostate cancer rarely develops in the males younger than 45. But its incidence increases sharply as age increases and most prostate cancer patients are older than 65 years old. Basically, the incidence is doubling each additional 10 years in those males older than 40. And the risk for the males in 50-59 years old is 10%, but for the ones in 80-89 years old, the risk goes up to 70%.

　　What are the risk factors of prostate cancer?

　　Absolute risk factors:

　　1) Age, it is the main risk factor of prostate cancer.

　　2) Family history, the incidence would obviously increase in those males whose direct relatives have suffered from prostate cancer.

　　3) Race. African Americans got the top incidence of prostate cancer, after that is Spanish and American white people and black African got the lowest incidence worldwide.

　　4) Irregular pathological changes of cells occur inside prostate. The incidence remarkably goes up in those males who have intraepithelial canceration of high-level prostate cancer.

　　Relative risk factors

　　1) Diets: prostate cancer is inclined to develop in the males who often have the diets that are rich in animal fat.

　　2) Androgen level. Internal androgen can stimulate the growth of prostate and is one of the inducements of prostate cancer.

　　Symptoms of prostate cancer

　　1. Obstructive symptoms. Such as difficulty of urination, urine retention, pain, hematuria and urinary incontinence occur.

　　2. Local infiltrating symptoms. Vesicorectal space usually is the first being involved, it includes prostate, seminal vesicle, spermaductus, inferior extremity of ureter and other organs. If the tumor encroaches to and depresses on spermaductus would lead to lumbar pain and lateral pain in testicle.

　　3. Other metastatic symptoms. Prostate cancer is tending to develop bone metastases. It doesn’t present any symptoms at the beginning. But there are cases of prostate cancer being found because of the nerve depression or fracture causing from bone metastases.

　　Detections of prostate cancer

　　1. Rectal touch

　　2. Serum prostate-specific antige assay

　　3. Assayof specifica acid phosphatase of prostate

　　4. Ultrasound examination

　　5. X-ray examination

　　6. Biopsy

　　7. CT scan or MRI

　　How does prostate cancer spread?

　　Prost cancer can spread extensively through blood and veins, and mostly extends to lungs and bones. The bones like pelvis, vertebra, ribs, femurs, clavicles, etc. can also be involved. But how does prostate cancer spread to vertebra, some specialists thought that was by vertebral venous plexus. However, there is proof supporting that prostate cancer spreads in the same way of other cancers, systemic circulation. In that case, the cases with vertebra metastases are probably have lung metastases.

　　Treatments available

　　1. Surgery. Surgery is the most common treatment to prostate cancer. Through open resection operation of prostate cancer to remove partial or the whole prostate being affected so as to stop the cancer from spreading.

　　2. Radiotherapy. It can be divided to below methods: 1) External radiation. 2) Radiation in tela, it normally is combined with radical correction of prostate cancer or pelvic lymphadenectomy. 3) General radiation, it can relieve the local pain causing from bone metastases and stop the development of cancer.

　　3. Chemotherapy, it is a general treatment for prostate cancer by chemicals, which can effectively control the spread of cancer cells.

　　4. Traditional Chinese medicine. To treat prostate cancer by traditional Chinese medicine, on one hand can effectively kill and constrain cancer cells to relieve the condition, on the other hand can generally adjust clinical condition of patient to enhance immunity and improve overall cure effect.

　　5. Minimally invasive therapy. Minimally invasive technology as a new technique in cancer treatments, it features small trauma, no complaints, less bleeding, fast recovery and so on.

　　Specialist from Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou figured out that, the treatment of prostate cancer cannot singly tend to local or one treatment, it should be based on the stage, tissue type and biological behavior of different tumors and general condition of patient, to combine surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, traditional Chinese medicine and minimally invasive therapy together in treatments to gain the best cure effect.

　　What are the rehabilitation measures of prostate cancer?

　　1. Interference of psychological rehabilitation. It helps patient eliminate the depression and anxiety, while it can encourage patients to be open-minded and keep a strong perseverance to cooperate with treatments.

　　2. Interference of diets and intestinal care. In order to reduce the incidence of constipation after operation, the patient should take more bland and easy digested fruits and vegetables, of which are rich in fibrin. Beside, drink more water and have defecation regularly in the morning each day to ensure a smooth bowel movement. Avoid spicy and irritating diets to prevent from constipation.

　　3. Interference of cystospasm care. When cystospasm occurs, the patient should take a deep breath and the family members can do some massage to relieve the pain. If post operative continuous cystospasm develops, pain killer should be given.

　　In addition, nice sleeping helps the patient recover, so a reasonable work-rest schedule to create a comfortable and proper sleeping environment is important.

　　What kinds of supports can be obtained?

　　Practice proves that the clinic team services composed by multiple disciplines like oncosurgery, oncology, pathology, imageology and anesthesia doctors as well as professional nurses, can provide patients with most effective, most suitable and most economic treatment plan, and also can greatly improve the therapeutic effect of treating cancer patients.

　　“One station” medical system constructed by Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou combining multiple disciplines, can perform comprehensive diagnosis and treatment for patients under the condition of without adding patients’ burden. Therefore, on one hand, it can provide all-round and heartfelt medical services, and on the other hand, it improves medical efficiency and level. There are many channels can be applied to conduct the communication between patients and doctors, like online consultation, email, telephone conversation, and face-to-face consultation. All these consultation services can effectively help patients to fight the cancer. While the medical team faced by the patients includes doctors, nurses, dietitians, interpreters and so on to meet various demands in different level of different countries. Patients would be more confident under the unobstructed communication environment to cooperate the hospital to diagnose and treat the diseases.