Doctors warned yesterday that normal prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test results are not a guarantee that a person is cancer-free.
PSA is a popular method of screening for prostate cancer, but some people could still have cancer despite having normal PSA values, doctors said at a press conference in Taipei.
The latest data available from the Department of Health (DOH) showed that in 2006, prostate cancer ranked fifth among the types of cancer that afflict men in Taiwan, affecting 23.4 people out of every 100,000.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Prostate cancer occurs in a gland in the male reproductive system. It may cause pain, difficulty urinating and erectile dysfunction, said Tony Wu (吳東霖), chief of Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital's urology division.
While prostate cancer screening is usually conducted by using the PSA test, it is inadequate in spotting the cancerous cells early and effectively, he said.
Wu cited statistics from a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in May 2004, saying that although men who tested with a PSA level of below 4 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) were considered normal, 23.9 percent of those with a PSA of 2.1 to 3.0 ng/mL and 26.9 percent of those with a PSA of 3.1 to 4.0 ng/mL turned out to have prostate cancer.
One way to effectively detect the cancerous tissue is by choosing thulium YAG laser operation over other forms of laser or conventional surgery methods when the patient is suffering from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which affects more than half of men over 50 years old, said Eric Fan (范文宙), an attending physician at Chi Mei Medical Center's Liou Ying Campus in Tainan County.
BPH is a condition characterized by enlargement of the prostate. Symptoms include frequent and difficult urination.
Although there are a number of ways of treating the disease, including using photoselective vaporization of the prostate, these methods do not allow for samples of the prostate tissue to be preserved and analyzed for presence of cancerous tissue, Fan said.
Fan and Wu recommended that men suffering from BPH opt for thulium YAG laser operation or transurethral resection of prostate surgery, so that the tissue sample can be tested for cancer.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching