FACT - Males of any age, including teenagers, can suffer from prostatitis which can be with them for the good part of their lives causing traumatic pain and a totally disrupted lifestyle. Some are unable to lead normal social or working lives.
Prostatitis is a sexually transmitted disease.
FACT - It can be, but the PHA have many cases of men who bring home prostatitis from hospital following a TURP operation, biopsy or other internal investigation.
Prostatitis can be cured with a weeks course of antibiotics.
FACT - Chronic prostatitis can require several months of targetted antibiotics to even stand a chance of defeating it.
Prostatitis will burn itself out.
FACT - Bacteria become locked into the small acini of the gland and may stay there for a long, long time. The patient feels that he has recovered only to have a relapse months later as the bacteria breaks out of the acini.
Prostatitis is all in the mind.
FACT- Early fast treatment for this disease is necessary in an attempt to stop it from becoming chronic. Whilst such myths remain early treatment options are lost and the patient can become a permanent invalid. The following suggestions are essential for managing severely painful prostatitis.
- The realisation by the GP from the first consultation that s/he is dealing with a major pain syndrome, not a nebulous psychosexual problem or overstated mild discomfort.
- Achievement of a stable pain killing regimen within three weeks of the onset of symptoms.
- Four hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time (ie the man has to get up only once at night).
- The patients ability to work at 60-70% of pre-illness efficiency.
BPH - Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia
BPH is an old man's disease.
FACT - Benign growth can affect men in their 50's leading to a disrupted social and working lifestyle.
The only cure for BPH is an operation.
FACT - As well as alternative products from you health food store, your GP will have drugs such as alpha blockers (Flomax & Doralese) which can relax the gland and allow Finasteride (Proscar) time to shrink the gland to avoid an operation.
The TURP (transurethral resection of the prostate) operation is the gold standard treatment for BPH.
FACT - Although it is so labelled it has been around for over 60 years. It is true that the equipment has improved over the years but the basic technique is the same. It can produce serious side effects and need not necessarily work. The PHA have had letters from men who have had three, four and five such operations with no final success. The PHA do not consider a treatment which can leave - "a third of its patients either worse off or no better, or a third suffering from impotence" * - a 'gold standard' treatment. (*Article by Dr Phil Hammond. - "I'm a Doctor, Trust Me".)
Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer is an old mans disease.
FACT - Prostate cancer kills men in their 40's, or can lead to many years of trauma from that age through to an early death in their 50's.
National PSA screening is the answer to prostate cancer deaths.
FACT - The PSA test does not only indicate that a man may have prostate cancer. Never go ahead with a biopsy etc on the result of one PSA test. The test can read 'high' for reasons apart from prostate cancer. Inflammation/infection of the prostate, recent ejaculation, are two events which can push up a PSA reading. Promoted national screening would 'find' men with suspect PSA's who would be processed down the prostate cancer investigation line. Many would not have PC but would be traumatised and investigated.
If you feel that women have a better medical screening service than men I would draw to your attention a report fronted by Julietta Patnick. The Breast Cancer Screening Programme reported in 1999 they had screened 1,268,236 women, 7,141 of those screened had breast cancer. They claimed 1,250 were saved because of screening. (They don't say what life extension these 1,250 patients had over and above what they could have expected if not detected.). That leaves almost 6,000 who were not saved plus another 3,000 who had surgery for lumps that turned out to be harmless. 3,000 taumatised women plus probably, 3,000 husbands and families as well.
Men in the USA and on the continent have a better 5 year survival rate than men in the UK.
FACT - They are not comparing like with like. But it is a great headline maker as good as the Aids lobby claiming that all UK hetrosexuals would come down with Aids if vast sums were not put into Aids research which proved to be equally false.
It is the same line of reasoning which leads many surgeons to advocate annual PSA tests for all men. They are firmly convinced that early diagnosis and radical treatment, surgery or radiotherapy, produces a 'cure'. Quotes such as :-
"In Germany where regular PSA is standard practice the five year survival rate is 50% better than in Britain," and again in the USA "nearly twice as many are alive five years after diagnosis compared with Britains."
But let's look at it from a different perspective.
Of course, if you diagnose what can be a slow progressive disease five years earlier in Germany, because you have regular PSA tests and then treat it and then compare the results with Britain where there is very little early detection, then the five year survival rate is going look better. It does not mean that the treatment you have given to the men in Germany has necessarily increased the survival time, it may simply be because you have diagnosed the disease 5 years earlier !
In Germany the patient diagnosed with minute cancer cells, which may or may not affect his lifespan, has the worry of the diagnosis, the trauma of the treatments with any attendant side effects over the full five years 'extended' (?) survival time. In Britain the non-diagnosed patient with minute cancer cells which may or may not affect his lifespan has no worry, no treatment side effects, (which usually means lifestyle changes for the 5 years). If symptoms then occur he has a choice of beginning treatment.
There have been no long term clinical studies to show that any one radical treatment is better than doing nothing at all. Until medics can complete such trials, can positively distinguish between aggressive cancer and non- aggressive cancer it is imperative that each man makes his own choice about screening and subsequent treatment assuming he has all the facts before him.
Current treatments can cure prostate cancer.
Each patient should ask his specialist on what evidence for success is he making a treatment recommendation ? Drugs need to have extensive trials before they are tried on the average patient.
Radical treatment for early diagnosed prostate cancer has had no long term trials to prove its efficacy. That does not mean that the treatments are useless, on the contrary some radical prostatectomies will no doubt excise the cancer totally, some hormone treatments will push the cells back into total remission, and some radiotherapy will do the same. What is required is proof that this is happening in the majority of cases and that the treatment benefits outweigh the side effects.
We are grateful to the Prostate Help Association the for their help in compiling this section.
