Prostate cancer prognosis issues basically deal with the likely outcome of the disease on a patient and its treatment. To put it in other words it involves finding about a patient’s chances of getting better and how long is he likely to survive. Prognosis issues in prostate cancer are many. For one it is difficult to work out the entire prognosis itself for prostate cancer. This is so because doctors need to take several factors into consideration before finding how the prostate cancer is likely to grow.
Prognosis issues of prostate cancer deals with these factors. Some of these factors include the stage of the cancer, the PSA level and the Gleason grade or score. The stage of the cancer is an important aspect of prostate cancer prognosis issues. This is true with almost every type of cancer. The Gleason score or grade is arrived at by looking on the cells of the prostate under a microscope. This enables doctors to grade a particular patient’s cancer. A Gleason score of 2, 3 or 4 indicates that the growth of prostate cancer is likely to grow very slowly. Similarly a score of 5, 6 or 7 indicates a moderate growth rate while a score of 8 to 10 indicates that it is a high grade cancer that is likely to grow fast.
All these aspects make up vital components of prostate cancer prognosis issues. Whenever the score is low and the patient is old, the doctors suggest active monitoring of the cancer. This is so because mostly in such cases the cancer is not likely to spread and cause any further problem. Those who have a higher score are suggested active treatment.
The PSA level is another important factor that doctors take into consideration while dealing with prostate cancer prognosis issues. The PSA level in the blood when diagnosed indicates the stage of the cancer. There are also instances when a low stage cancer with a higher level of PSA may behave worse than a high stage cancer with a comparatively lower level of PSA.
Based on these prognosis issues doctors would prescribe the types of treatment. The entire score of all these methods is taken into consideration before the doctors pronounce a definite verdict on particular conditions. They may for instance arrive at a conclusion with some patients that they can be completely cured with radical treatment. In certain other cases when the patients are elderly in particular, they may not be suggested any treatment at all. This is so because in their case the cancer would be of slow growing nature and will not cause them any problem and they may eventually die of old age. This is usually the case with stage 1 and stage 2 patients.
Similarly those men who are diagnosed with stage 3 of prostate cancer are ascertained to live for more than five years after diagnosis. Stage 4 indicates an advanced level of the disease. In such cases doctors indicate that about 30% of patients have chances of living for more than five years after the actually diagnosis. On an average it is found that patients respond to their treatment for about 12 to 18 months, after which the average survival is for about another two years or so. These statistics are also found to vary from case to case though. You can find a lot of useful information on the prognosis issues related to prostate cancer by visiting online sources. You can also go through extensive literature related to prognosis issues, dealt by leading physicians themselves at most of these online sources.