What tests should be done for prostate cancer? A brief introduction to the four major test methods

Young and middle-aged men may most often suffer from prostatitis and prostate hyperplasia. As they age, the incidence of prostate cancer is getting higher and higher, especially men over 55 years old are prone to this disease. The early symptoms are not particularly obvious. Even if there are some symptoms, many people mistakenly think that they are reactions to some benign diseases. Therefore, we need to go to the hospital for regular check-ups and take timely measures to treat the disease after discovering it. So how is prostate cancer diagnosed clinically?

The first is rectal examination, which is the simplest and most practical examination method in clinical practice. If we find prostate nodules during the examination, we need to consider the possibility of prostate cancer and we should go to the hospital for further examination.

The second is the serum prostate specific antigen (pSA) test. The serum prostate specific antigen test is currently a common sensitive indicator. Under normal circumstances, the pSA in the blood is not higher than 4ng/ml. If prostate cancer or other prostate diseases occur, then this indicator will increase. If pSA increases and it can be clearly ruled out that it is caused by inflammatory diseases, then we need to consider this disease.

The next is rectal ultrasound examination. Because rectal ultrasound examination will directly affect the pSA results, it should be performed after the pSA examination. Therefore, we should perform rectal ultrasound examination again to observe the lesions of prostate tissue.

The last one is prostate puncture biopsy, which is the gold standard for diagnosing cancer. If the patient feels a nodule during rectal examination, has elevated serum pSA, or has an ultrasound examination, we should go to the hospital for a puncture biopsy.

The above are the examination methods for prostate cancer that we introduced to you. After we suspect that the patient has a problem with the prostate, we need to conduct a serum prostate-specific antigen test. If the disease cannot be confirmed, then we need to adopt the most standard examination method, which is a prostate puncture biopsy. After the puncture biopsy, we can clearly determine whether the patient has cancer and what stage the cancer is in.