Most common in men over the age of fifty, cancer that appears in the prostate is effecting a gland located below the bladder and in front of the rectum that aids in the storage and production of sperm. Normally detected during a routine screening (that should be part of the male health care regimen when the age of greatest risk has been reached), prostate cancer can be slow growing and confined to the gland in question or can be aggressive and spread to other parts of the body.

The average age at diagnosis is seventy, leading many men to follow a pattern of watchful waiting. In order to determine what course of action is best in early prostate cancer cases the most important questions are the overall health of the patient and prostate cancer staging. The process of staging is one that assesses how far the cancer has spread and estimates its probable rate of future growth.

Overall evaluation and prostate cancer staging always precede any decision about treatment. In cases of early prostate cancer a biopsy will most likely be taken. A pathologist examines the collected tissues under the microscope and determines how they differ from the surrounding prostate tissue.

Using the Gleason system, a scale with a range of scores from one to ten, the pathologist grades the most common pattern he observes with a number from one to five and uses the same system to label the second most common pattern. By adding those two scores, the Gleason number is achieved. Ten indicates the highest number of abnormalities. The "grade" of the tumor is critical in early prostate cancer evaluation as a basis for recommended treatment.

Then, in the TNM System (tumor / nodes / metastases) the size of the tumor, the degree to which the lymph nodes are involved, and the presence of metastases (spreading) are considered. Tumors rated as T1 and T2 are still confined to the prostate with T3 and T4 cancers having spread. Hopefully with good detection methods early prostate cancer will be confined to the gland itself.

Other evaluation methods used in cases of early prostate cancer may include computed tomography (looking for cancer that has spread to the pelvis), bone scans, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Determining whether or not the cancer has spread it extremely important as it will dramatically effect what treatment is administered. The only time when watchful waiting with regular evaluation is acceptable in cases of prostate cancer is when the tumor has been shown to have an extremely slow growth rate.

Although chemotherapy is rarely used in cases of prostate cancer, radiation is an option as is hormone therapy and cryosurgery (or freezing with liquid nitrogen.) More than seventy percent of prostate cancer cases are resolved with surgery to remove the prostate. Unfortunately the involved procedure often causes moderate to severe urinary incontinence and sexual impotence. Recent drug therapy development (most notably the availability of Viagra) have given men renewed hope for correcting sexual dysfunction after prostate cancer surgery and better therapies are also now available to address the incontinence issues.