What is Prostate Cancer?
What are the risks for prostate cancer?
- Age, family history of prostate cancer, and African American race
Are there common symptoms?
- Usually there are no symptoms
How do you screen for prostate cancer?
- The PSA blood test or a digital rectal exam (DRE)
Talk to your doctor about whether getting screened for cancer is right for you!
Cancer is a condition where cells in the body start to grow out of control. When this happens in the prostate, an organ that is part of the male reproductive system, it is called prostate cancer.
Who is at Risk?
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in American men. Approximately 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and 1 in 41 men will die of the disease. As you get older, your risk increases.
Furthermore, some men have a higher risk of getting prostate cancer and dying from it. For example, African American men and men with a family history of prostate cancer have an increased risk.
Men with more than one “first-degree relative” (e.g. a father, son, or brother) who have had prostate cancer, and men with a strong family history of breast, pancreatic, or ovarian cancer may have an increased risk of getting prostate cancer. This type of risk is related to genes. Generally speaking, African American men are more likely to get prostate cancer and are at increased risk to have a disease that is more aggressive or advanced.
What are the Signs and Symptoms?
In most cases, prostate cancer has no symptoms and is usually detected through screening. Screening means checking for disease in the absence of symptoms.
The Prostate Cancer Options Clinic at the Stony Brook University Hospital Cancer Center has been created to encompass patients with:
- Newly detected elevated PSA
- Elevated PSA and negative biopsies
- Positive biopsies that need further risk stratification (usually via molecular analysis) regarding how aggressive the cancer is and what treatment options are possible. - See Active Surveillance Program below
- Failed primary therapies (surgery or radiation) and regional disease
- Early or late metastatic disease
- Patients with known genetic abnormalities
Active Surveillance Program:
Stony Brook offers the ability to distinguish small, low-risk cancers from those likely to metastasize. Using genomic tests, which evaluate the biology of a tumor, information is obtained that can change treatment plans radically. These prostate cancer genomic tests include Prolaris and Decipher which have become available in recent years.
Stony Brook's Urological Oncology team is able to serve the community with such problems due to new technological advancements assisting in diagnosis and treatment. The Prostate Cancer Options Clinic utilizes the UroNav System to perform targeted prostate biopsies, utilizing fused images from MRI and real-time ultrasound.
To schedule an appointment at the Prostate Cancer Options Clinic please call (631) 638-1000.
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