Malignant prostate cancer is not a “death sentence”

Lao Gao is over 80 years old this year. Although he has some high blood pressure and diabetes , his health is basically good and he can do many trivial things in life by himself. Recently, when he went to the hospital for a comprehensive physical examination, he was found to have prostate cancer. Although the doctor said it was in the early stage, Lao Gao's spirit collapsed all of a sudden. He was frowning all day and his body soon collapsed. This made the whole family anxious. The family looked for doctors and medicine everywhere. After searching for nothing, they decided to take Lao Gao to the largest local hospital and asked for surgery. However, what puzzled them was that the expert told them: Lao Gao's prostate cancer does not need treatment at all. What is going on? Isn't it cancer? Isn't it equivalent to a death sentence for people who are infected with cancer? The family and Lao Gao have countless reasons that need to be answered by doctors. Here we will take you to solve this mystery.

Among various types of cancer, Prostate cancer is very special and has a subclinical form. In layman's terms, if no treatment is given after diagnosis, such as gastric cancer or lung cancer, the tumor will continue to progress and eventually threaten the patient's life. Prostate cancer is different. It is an old age disease. Among men in their seventies and eighties, more than half of them already have cancer cells in their prostates. But there is a strange phenomenon. Patients with prostate cancer do not eventually die from prostate cancer. In these patients, the cancer cells in the prostate coexist peacefully with the patients. In other words, for some patients, having prostate cancer does not mean that the disease will take the patient's life.

Clinically, not all early-stage prostate cancers require immediate surgery. After comprehensively considering the patient's age, general physical condition, tumor differentiation and stage, it is advisable to adopt a "wait and see" approach for some patients.