ONE in every 10 Jamaican men will develop prostate cancer, according to urologist Hope Russell.

The urologist, who was one of the medical doctors who assisted the Jamaica Cancer Society during last Thursday’s screening as part of activities to mark Prostate Cancer Awareness Day, stated that once men are over 45, testing should start, in order to ensure that men don’t have or develop prostate cancer.

She encouraged women to accompany the men as to have the prostate test done as males, most times, do not like going to the doctor, while there was a lot of fear surrounding the screening procedures.

“We take a little history [to] find out what’s been happening to them; if they have any family members who have had prostate cancer and so on, we do a digital rectal examination (DRE). We insert a gloved finger into the rectum which is not painful but maybe a little uncomfortable because you are not used to having a finger inserted. The doctor is able to palpate the surface of the prostate and make a decision,” Dr Russell said.

She said that when the examination is completed the client is sent to do a blood test at the laboratory and this is where the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test is done.

The normal range at the lab is zero to four Nano grams per deciliter, and Dr Russell said anything over four raises a suspicion and for those men, they would go further to do the rectal ultrasound and the biopsy.

“The biopsy is the only way of telling what’s happening in the prostate. The biopsy would give you the diagnosis of prostate cancer and give you a score that you can work with as to how severe the problem is,” the urologist stated.

Dr Russell explained that the treatment system that is in place for prostate cancer is firstly that of surgery — radical prostatectomy, where the entire prostate is taken out. She said it’s a major operation and that recovery usually goes well, though there might be complications such as bleeding and infection.

“Usually later on the patient may not recover his ability to have an erection but we are aware of that, but we have now progressed to the stage where the prostate is taken out but we don’t touch the nerves at all that have to do with an erection and so they retain their ability to have an erection,” said Dr Russell.

She said the next major way of treating prostate cancer would be radiotherapy, where the specialist shines some special rays on the prostate and burns the cancer cells away. Yet another method involves the planting of radioactive seeds in the prostate that will burn the area around the seeds and so the patient would not be required to do the major radiotherapy.

In addition to these treatments, there is also medication. According to Dr Russell, there have been a couple of medications that have been identified to treat prostate cancer such as hormonal therapy among others. She said this is because specialists feel that the male testosterone is one of the causes of the change to prostate cancer from a normal prostate, even though this has not yet been confirmed.

Asked what advice she would give to men in terms of lifestyle choices, Dr Russell admitted that healthy eating is always the best, with a healthy meal consisting of protein, some vegetables and a small amount of starch.

“At one time I was finding in my practice that I had a lot of diabetics who were developing prostate cancer; people came in with the diagnosis of diabetes for a couple years and now they have prostate cancer, it may have been an incidental finding,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

The urologist said, too, that she is aware that there may be deficiencies over long periods of time such as a deficiency in vitamin E intake. She added that Jamaicans don’t tend to eat a lot of vegetables and so persons are constantly encouraged to have a balance of vitamins, minerals and trace elements in their diet.

“It’s really nothing specific, I usually tell my patients to cut back on saturated fats and trans fats. Trans fats are the oils that have been changed to give it a long shelf life and were finding that trans fat are not so good for us so that is one thing, I encourage persons to use Omega 3, the poly unsaturated and mono unsaturated fats,” Dr Russell said.