Print

Mail

wiki links

Doctors cautious on PSA testing results

Eric Fan, an attending physician at Chi Mei Medical Center’s Liou Ying Campus in Tainan County, introduces thulium-YAG laser treatment for prostate cancer patients at Sheraton Hotel in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES

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.

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.
This story has been viewed 1560 times.