Posts Tagged ‘PSA’

My prostate and yours: benign and malignant

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013
At my age, I'm not scheduling this.

At my age, I'm not scheduling this.

I just printed an article from the Annals of Internal Medicine that confirms my own leanings toward prostate screening tests. In one of my old posts I told the story of having an abnormal blood test for kidney function and seeking out our senior urologist at Duke. I was a clinical Nephrology fellow at the time and when I was seen, the Chief of Urology asked what kind of diet I was on.

I groaned at that point since I realized I was in the middle of a research project and eating a very high-protein diet. That's why the more accurate of the two blood chemistry tests was entirely normal and the other, clearly influenced by my diet, was high.

He then said, "As long as you're here, Peter, let me check your prostate.

The digital rectal exam (DRE) revealed I had a mildly enlarged gland for my age and the urologist said, "You're going to have a TURP by the time you're sixty.

I knew a TURP was a transurethral resection of the prostate. If you look at the Mayo Clinic website I've provided, you'll see it's a procedure to relieve partial obstruction of the urethra, the tube that runs from the bladder through the penis to allow normal urination. The prostate itself, whose major task is to provide seminal (sperm-carrying) fluid, is a walnut-shaped, one ounce gland, or at least it is in younger men. As men age the prostate commonly enlarges. If it does so in a non-cancerous way, the condition is called BPH, benign prostatic hyperplasia (or hypertrophy as I was taught in medical school; the first term implies more cells; the other a bigger gland without specifying how it got that way).

As the prostate gets bigger and partially blocks the outflow of urine, men have a decreased urine stream, difficulty starting its flow, dribbling after urination or a more frequent need to pee, especially at night.

Urologists do about 150,000 TURPs a year in America, although there are a number of other procedures to treat BPH. And they want to do a DRE and draw blood for a PSA on more of us guys than I would agree with. There are other tests in their repertoire: rectal ultrasound, urine flow study and cystoscopy (inserting an instrument into the urethral to actually look at how narrow the passageway is).

The American Urological Association's (AUA) webpage on the surgical management of the condition says 88% of men who have a TURP will have significant improvement in their symptoms. But there are lots of complications that can occur right after the procedure: infection in 15%, bleeding requiring blood transfusion in 5-10%, impotence in 14%, incontinence in 1%. Ten percent may require a second operation within 5 years.

There also are medical therapies for BPH; I take two different pills a day for my BPH and will turn 72 in two weeks. I haven't needed a TURP yet.

But that's benign disease: how about prostatic cancer?

The ACP says there's debate on screening; what does your physician think?

The ACP says prostate cancer screening should be individualized; what does your physician think?

The recent Annals article I mentioned looked at four sets of prostate cancer screening recommendations, all from national organizations: the American College of Preventive Medicine, the American Cancer Society; the AUA and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

After doing so, the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians (ACP), a national society of internal medicine physicians, issued two guidance statements. ACP wants all clinicians to tell their male patients who are 50 or older and under age 70 that the positive effects of screening for this malignancy are limited and there are considerable potential negative effects.

That being said, if I were an African American man in that age range I'd be much more likely to ask to be screened. Both the incidence rate and the mortality rate from prostate cancer are higher in black men. And if I had a family history of the disease in a first-degree relative (father, brother or son), I might be first in line for a PSA and possibly a DRE. With one such having had it, my risk doubles and with two close relatives having the disease, my chances go up fourfold. That's especially true if they were diagnosed before they turned 65.

Overall a sixth of all men will eventually be diagnosed with cancer of the prostate. It will lead directly to death in a much lower percentage (2.9% was the figure the ACP quoted from a National Cancer Institute fact sheet). So although 2.3-2.5 million men in this country are living with this malignancy and last year nearly a quarter of a million got the diagnosis of prostate cancer in the U.S., a considerably smaller number were likely to die from the cancer itself.

Why does this make sense?

Well let's start with the second of the ACP's guidance statements: the organization says that men with an average risk of the disease shouldn't be screened until they are 50 and those of us 70 and older also should avoid having a PSA as a cancer screening tool. They go further and say men who are not expected to live more than 10 to 15 more years also should not be screened.

The fact sheet from the Prostate Cancer Foundation says it is the most common non-skin cancer in America with a new case very 2.2 minutes and a death every 17.5 minutes. But it's rare in men under 40 with 1 in 10,000 being diagnosed with the ailment versus 1 in 14 who are aged 60 to 69.

If we look at the totals: 97% of men diagnosed with prostate cancer are 50 or older and nearly two-thirds  are over 65.

The USPSTF came out with an update to their take on screening guidelines in 2012. They agree that the benefits of these tests, primarily the PSA, are less than the potential harm associated: false-positive tests, psychological effects, biopsies that are not necessary and over-diagnosis of cancers that often do not reach any clinical significance in the lifetime of the patient involved.

In other words, elderly men may well have prostate cancer, but they most commonly die from something else. And screening men at age 40, as the AUA suggest, doesn't appear to be based on any major studies.

If you are a man over 50, but less than 70, or black or first-degree relatives (father or brothers) have had the disease, have a sincere talk with your doc about the risks and benefits of screening.

But I don't fit into any of those groups, so I don't plan to get a PSA unless or until I see different data.

Thank you, ACP, for clarifying the subject, especially since you agree with me.

 

 

Prostate Cancer Controversies

Friday, September 7th, 2012

A prostate cancer awareness symbol

Prostate cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in older men. A few years ago most of us males over the age of forty (it seldom occurs before that) were periodically screened for the disease using the PSA test (a blood test for a prostate-specific antigen) and had digital rectal exams to check the size and consistency of our prostates whenever we had our yearly appointment for a physical and also had comprehensive lab work done.

Then things changed: the annual medical exam was discarded by most physicians in favor of a targeted examination, which in my case, with my history of high blood pressure, includes a nurse taking my BP and my doc listening to my heart and lungs. Not much else, unless I have a specific complaint. I'm 71 and haven't had a digital exam for five years. I had a PSA done when blood was drawn for other reasons and it was 0.7, well under the level that would have raised any concern about my prostate.

In October, 2011, the Harvard Health Blog provided two points of view on pending new recommendations for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. A panel of experts after a thorough review of the literature on prostate cancer had concluded, that for men over 50, screening using the PSA test offered a low benefit to risk ratio. A huge controversy broke out with the American Urological Association arguing against the proposed new concept. Other physicians noted that an elevated PSA doesn't always mean cancer and, much more importantly, doesn't  distinguish which cancers of the gland are likely to be fast-growing and life threatening.

Oncologist, Dr. Marc Garnick, editor of Harvard's "Annual Report on Prostate Diseases," noted that the new testing recommendation was not a blanket statement fitting all men: those at higher risk (African-Americans and men with family history of cancer of the prostate) may still be suitable candidates for annual PSA testing. He later published an article in Scientific American mentioning that the use of regular PSA testing had led to over a million men having treatment for prostate cancer since 1985 and many thousands of men having complications of prostate surgery or radiation therapy (impotence, incontinence, rectal bleeding).

Dr. Garnick basically agreed with the task force's conclusions; felt the evidence supporting regular PSA testing was flimsy, but thought that the procedure gave important information after a cancer of the gland has been diagnosed.

Garnick was interviewed by a senior editor of the magazine and the resultant February 8, 2012, piece supplies audio comments from Dr. Garnick which detail some of the issues. One such concerns a man who has had his malignancy removed by a total (radical) prostatectomy. His PSA should plummet down to undetectable levels and, if it doesn't, either not all the cancer was excised or there has been spread beyond the local area (metastases).

I was reading my email a few days ago and noted one from my friend Rick with a link leading to an article from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle titled "Prostate Cancer: 6 things men should know." There were six myths rebutted and I especially noted four conclusions: eating tomato-based foods and products doesn't prevent the malignancy; high testosterone levels don't correlate with risk of this tumor; omega-3s don't lower the risk (actually very high blood levels in one study were associated with higher risk); dietary supplements (selenium and vitamin E) don't prevent the disease.

At age 50 and above, this was on my schedule; at age 71 it's not

Another online publication from the Hutchinson Center gives background information on prostatic cancer. They note the frequency of the disease increases in men over 55, that obese men have a higher risk of developing an aggressive form of the disease, as do smokers. Those who drink red wine (four 4-ounce glasses a week) were noted to have a 60% lower incidence. Older men may receive unnecessary surgery; in this group the malignancy, often small and slow-growing, may not be life-shortening.

The need for screening in the general population of men is an ongoing medical controversy. We'll likely hear much more about PSA testing, but many would concede that a new type of evaluation needs to be developed.

I agree and for now I don't plan to have any more PSAs drawn.