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My name is Shiv Bhanot, I'm an urologist, and I practice in Essex, King George Hospital,
Queen's Hospital, and a couple of private hospitals.
Prostate gland is a small gland, which is of the size and shape of a walnut, present
at the junction of bladder and the tube called urethra, through which men pass their urine.
Men might come with symptoms such as passing urine frequently, daytime, getting up in the
night, or both, having feeling of what we call urgency, rushing to the loo.
And many other times they have no symptoms whatsoever.
If a man is worried about having prostate cancer, the best thing for him to do is go
and speak to their GP. The GP will often go through their symptoms,
examine them, and advise them regarding the PSA test.
For the PSA test, what we do is we take a blood sample, and send it to the lab, and
they give us a reading. And the PSA actually stands for Prostate Specific
Antigen, which is a protein produced only by the prostate gland.
It's a very good test which helps us in directing us towards those men who need prostate biopsies.
But many men may unnecessarily have biopsies of their prostate, which have their own complications.
So that is the negative side of having a PSA test and then going down the line of having biopsies
which may then come back as negative. PSA test is a test more of probability of
prostate cancer than a test where we can say positive or negative.
Men who have larger prostates, or those who have diseases like prostatitis, some men who
do regular cycling, they may have a high PSA rating without having a cancer.
If a man is worried about the risk of having prostate cancer, it will be quite reasonable
for him to go through the PSA toolkit, which is a patient information sheet which is available
in most GP practices, and also on the internet, which goes through the pros and cons of having
the PSA test done, and includes all the uncertainties linked with this test.
I used to see men with cancer spread into their bones.
That was the only way men used to present to my clinical practice.
Most men with prostate cancer we see nowadays have cancer which is curable.
[Announcer] For information, help, or if you just want a chat,
call the Macmillan Support Line on 0808 808 00 00, or visit Macmillan.org.uk