What is the cancer?

In fact this word taboo comes from the thought of many centuries ago, when they were comparing that one for rare illness of that time to the crab, we believe than for his unpredictable steps and his paws, which were remembering the extension of the cancer.

Nowadays we continue without knowing what is this illness. Yes we know that it takes place for an abnormal multiplication of cells of a part of our organism.

The normal thing is that the cells grow and mature inside a healthy textile. But when they change and do not differ and mature appropriately, the cells multiply fast and a tumor takes place, in this case, the cancer of prostate.

From the tumor, his cells can go on to the lymphatic system or to the blood. This way the metástasis take place to ganglions or organs. There, the cells colonize, adapt themselves to the new textile and grow again.

The prostate

The prostate has the size of a nut. With the standing man, it is placed below the bladder of the urine and ahead the rectum (final portion of the intestine) and behind the base of the penis.

The prostate is located surrounding the pipe (urethra) that takes the urine and the semen towards the penis.

This anatomical situation explains the symptoms that can provoke an abnormal growth of the prostate, especially urinal declarations.

Is there a more predominant type of cancer of prostate?

In effect, more than 95 % of cases is adenocarcinomas, tumors that originate in the cells of the glands, in this case, in the prostate one.

What is the Gleason grade?

It is a very important classification to decide the treatment and to establish the prognosis of the cancer of prostate.

The Gleason grade values the grade of activity (aggressiveness and growth) of the cancer of prostate.

How is the Gleason grade established

To do it, the pathologist values two areas or areas of the sample of textile of the prostate obtained by means of biopsy (to see in Diagnosis). He tries to choose areas well representative of the tumor.

To each of two areas the pathologist assigns a punctuation that goes from the 1 to 5. The 1 corresponds to the cases of low aggressiveness of the tumor (the groups of cancerous cells are alike the normal glands of the prostate).

On the contrary, a punctuation of 5 is assigned when the cells less are alike the normal ones. From 2 to 4 include intermediate, progressively aggressive situations.

To establish the grade of Gleason of every case, the numerations assigned to every area join. For example: 3+4=7.

Therefore, there can be neither Gleason O nor 1, the minimum is 2 (1 + 1).

The most important thing to be born in mind is that the lower the Gleason is, minor is the possibility that the prostate cancer is aggressive, therefore, it will grow the more slowly and will spread the less.

In the opposite side, the higher is the Gleason, the more possibilities of tumor aggressiveness.

In short, it is considered that the Gleason placed between 2 and 4 correspond to low aggressiveness; that the 5 and 6 are intermediate situations and that the aggressiveness is increasing from 7 to 10.

What are the symptoms of the cancer of prostate?

They depend on the stage of evolution in which the cancer is.

In precocious stages, when the cancer is very small, it does not give symptoms. It explains that many men should have this cancer in precocious situation and perhaps they should not be going to find out in all his life.

In these initial stages, other men are diagnosed of prostate cancer by chance, be in a routine exploration or in an intervention for benign growth of the prostate. Sometimes, this benign growth has some area where the prostate cancer is diagnosed.

The same way as it advances the size of the tumor the difficulties can happen to urinate, that can come to the urinal obstruction or inability to urinate.

The affectation of lymphatic ganglions near to the prostate does not provide special symptoms.

On the other hand, the bony pains can correspond, when there has been established the diagnosis of cancer of prostate, to his dissemination to the skeleton, frequent place, if they present before themselves, of metástasis of the prostate cancer.

Nowadays it has changed very much the model of initial presentation of the cancer of prostate. a few years ago, many patients were coming with metástasis in the bones. Nowadays, every time more precozmente diagnoses this cancer, and therefore located in the prostate, from the introduction in the clinic of the PSA (to see PSA and precocious diagnosis).