Area doctor offering free prostate screenings Sept. 6

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer, excluding skin cancer of American men. The American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates that about 198,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 31,500 men will die of this disease.

John Whitt, M.D., urologist at South Texas Medical Clinics, is committed to diagnosing prostate cancer as early as possible. His annual prostate screening will be Sept. 6 in Wharton and Sept. 13 in Bay City, from 8 to 10:30 a.m. This is a free screening.

He recommends men 50 and over consider taking advantage of this screening.

Most prostate cancers develop in older men and grow very slowly. But some prostate cancers can grow quickly and spread to other parts of the body, causing symptoms and sometimes death.

Since prostate cancer testing has become relatively common, the prostate cancer death rate has dropped. But it has not been conclusively proven that this is a direct result of early detection. The decision as to whether or not a man should be tested should be left up to the individual and his health care provider.

Men who choose to have early detection testing should begin at age 50. However, men in high-risk groups, such as those with a strong family history, for example, a father or brother diagnosed at a young age or African Americans, should begin testing at 45 years of age.

Certain measures are recommended to make PSA testing as accurate as possible. Because ejaculation can cause a temporary increase in blood PSA levels, NCCN guidelines recommend abstaining from sexual activity for two days before testing. This helps avoid unnecessary worry and extra tests that might be done, because doctors cannot tell whether a slight PSA increase was caused by ejaculation or might be due to a prostate cancer.

The PSA test should not be done if a man has an acute urinary tract infection or prostatitis because these can elevate levels as well. Several medications and herbal preparations may lower PSA levels. In some cases, a man may have an early prostate cancer, but these products lower the PSA level enough to produce a normal test result. The outcome is that the cancer remains undetected.

PSA blood test results are reported as nanograms per milliliter or ng/ml. Results under 4 ng/ml are usually considered normal. Results over 10 ng/ml are high, and values between 4 and 10 are considered borderline. The higher the PSA level the more likely the presence of prostate cancer.

PSA levels estimate how likely a man is to have prostate cancer, but the test does not provide a definite answer.

About 25 percent of men with cancer will have a low PSA. This is why neither the ACS nor the NCCN recommends doing a PSA test without including the DRE as well. Since doctors started using this test, the number of prostate cancers found at an early, curable stage has increased. Since most men have normal test results, they can be reassured that they are unlikely to have prostate cancer, especially if their DRE result is also negative.

When your doctor takes a history, he or she will ask you a series of questions about your symptoms and risk factors. Some prostate cancers may be found because of symptoms such as slowing or weakening of the urinary stream or the need to urinate more often. These symptoms can also be caused by benign diseases of the prostate such as nodular hyperplasia (also known as benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH).

Symptoms of advanced prostate cancer may include blood in the urine, swollen lymph nodes in the groin area, impotence (difficulty having an erection) and pain in the pelvis, spine, hips or ribs. These symptoms may also be due to other diseases, and do not always mean that a man has prostate cancer. Most early prostate cancers cause no symptoms and are found by early detection. This is why testing with the PSA blood test and DRE should be considered by some men.

The decision each man makes about treating prostate cancer is a complex and important one. Life expectancy is an estimate based on each man's age and any serious health problems.

For more information on prostate detection or treatment guidelines, or on cancer in general, call 1-888-909-NCCN or the American Cancer Society at 1-800-ACS-2345. Or you can visit these organizations' Web sites at www.cancer.org (ACS) and www.nccn.org (NCCN).