Prostate cancer is a condition where the normal prostate cells in the body transform and begin to behave abnormally. The prostate is a small, walnut-sized organ that men have which connects the bladder and the seminal vesicles to the penis. Prostate cancer that is just in the prostate is generally not dangerous, but if it spreads to other places, it can unfortunately sometimes lead to death.

Prostate cancer is typically diagnosed using a PSA test, which is a prostate-specific blood test. There aren’t known causes of prostate cancer, but what we do know is that if people in your family have had it, your risk is generally a bit higher. A lot of cancers have symptoms, but prostate cancer is one of those that usually has no symptoms at all. Sometimes your doctor will feel your prostate to see if there’s anything unusual, but the main way to know if you have prostate cancer is to get a PSA test and to see if it’s elevated. If your doctor is concerned about your test results, usually the next step is either to go straight to biopsy or get an MRI and see if they can find a tumor on your prostate.

Your risk group generally defines what kind of treatment you should have for your prostate cancer. 85% of prostate cancers are localized, which means they haven’t spread to other parts of the body. These are divided into low risk, intermediate risk, and high risk. For low-risk prostate cancer, active surveillance is advisable. This means watching the prostate cancer closely, checking the PSA every six months, and doing an MRI or a biopsy every few years to make sure that it’s not changing. Low-risk prostate cancers generally aren’t very dangerous.

But for intermediate or high-risk prostate cancers, the patient needs to start thinking about the two standard therapies for prostate cancer, which include surgery or radiation and might sometimes include hormone therapy. 15% of prostate cancers are not localized, which unfortunately means they’ve spread to either the lymph nodes or bones or other organs, and this generally means that it’s either much more difficult to treat or not possible to manage at all. The good news is that research has shown us how to treat these cancers more effectively and help people live much longer.