1. Know What to Expect
If you're over age 40, you should have an annual prostate exam. The purpose of this test is to screen you for prostate and rectal cancer, and it consists of a doctor manually examining your prostate via a procedure known as a digital-rectal examination, or DRE.
During your prostate exam, your doctor will put on a lubricated glove and feel your prostate, checking for hard lumps and making evaluations of the size of your prostate. In some cases, you may be asked to submit a stool sample for analysis. If this happens to you, it's most likely that your doctor is looking for traces of blood in the stool, which can be caused by the presence of cancer or pre-cancerous growths in your rectum.
2. The Possibility of Inconclusive Results
You should remember that this test is, by itself, is insufficient to diagnose or rule out cancer or any other common condition, such as an enlarged prostate. Instead, doctors use it as a way to check for abnormalities that require further examination. While you prepare to undergo this screening procedure, keep in mind that there can be suspicious-seeming results that turn out to be nothing at all. For example, an enlarged prostate is a benign condition that has the same characteristics as cancerous growths, at least as detected during a digital-rectal examination.
3. Anticipate What May Come Next
Your doctor will order more tests if anything out of the ordinary is detected during the digital-rectal exam. You might be asked to take a blood test or prepare for an ultrasound or biopsy of your prostate. Since a prostate exam is nothing more than a screening tool, any potential problems the test uncovers will need to be investigated in more detail during follow-up visits to your doctor.
If you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, you should expect that surgery will be recommended as the first treatment option. Fortunately, the prognosis is generally good for men whose prostate cancer is caught early.
4. Are You a Candidate for a PSA Test?
Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing has heralded a sharp decline in prostate cancer mortality rates. PSAs are produced by both healthy and cancerous prostate cells, but malignant tissues tend to produce these antigens in higher concentrations. Doctors have developed tests you can take to measure the amount of antigens in your prostate tissue, and cancer may be suspected if they're unusually high. Your doctor may suggest that you get a PSA test due to the fact that some cases of prostate cancer go undetected for a very long time because they aren't found with a DRE or other conventional screening techniques.
However, you should expect that a number of other factors may influence the test results, making it difficult to confirm whether or not malignant cancer may be the cause. Your age, the rate at which your PSA readings are shifting and the physical size of your prostate gland can all contribute to high readings which aren't indicative of cancer. When you talk over this test with your doctor, you should indicate if you've been using finasteride for hair loss or for prostatic hypertrophy, since this drug can alter your PSA levels and make getting accurate readings more difficult.
