How Does My Doctor Know I Hav... Health Article

If you’re having prostate-cancer-like symptoms, your doctor will want to know why. Your doctor is likely to ask you questions about your:

• Medical history

• Family history of cancer

• Lifestyle habits, such as what you eat and how much you exercise

• Exposure to other risk factors, such as working with industrial chemicals

In addition to asking you questions, your doctor may also perform a physical exam. Here’s what your doctor will do to evaluate you.

• Give you a digital rectal exam (DRE). During a digital rectal exam, the doctor or nurse practitioner inserts a gloved, lubricated finger into the rectum. The prostate can be felt through the rectal wall. The examiner will check for hard or lumpy areas. Lumps in the prostate are called nodules.

• Use blood tests to measure your levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA). You'll give a small sample of your blood to be checked in a lab. Your doctor will get measurements of your blood levels of PSA and prostatic acid phosphatase ( PAP). PSA levels may rise in men who have prostate cancer, BPH, or an infection in the prostate. PAP levels may also rise in men with prostate cancer.

•  Use urine tests to look for blood or infection. A sample of your urine will be sent to a lab for evaluation.

• Use tests to help evaluate your urinary problems, looking for blockages or other problems. These tests may include looking into the urethra and bladder with a cystoscope in a process known as cystoscopy. Or your doctor may recommend an X-ray of the entire urinary tract, called an intravenous pyelogram (IVP).

The results of these tests may be enough to rule out cancer. Or the results may require more tests. If your PSA level is only a little high, but your DRE was normal, your doctor may recommend having another  PSA test in 6 weeks. If it’s still not normal, then your doctor may recommend other tests. A raised PAP or level may be due to other problems, so you may need tests to find out what’s going on.

To tell for sure if you have cancer, your doctor will need to remove fluid or tissue from your prostate. This is called a biopsy.