According to a research team at the Vanderbilt University Medical Centre and the Vice Chairman of the Department of Urology and Chief of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Centre, Dr. David Samadi, the size of prostate could indicate the severity of the prostate cancer found in patients.
Dr. Samadi is the Vice Chairman, Department of Urology, and the Chief of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. Source: ROBOTICONCOLOGY.COM
Experts in the medical field are continuously faced with the challenge to develop better diagnostic methods to detect the severity of the cancer when its presence is discovered.
According to the findings of the research team, if the size of the prostate is small with a high PSA level then the chances of the prostate cancer becoming more severe are high. While some experts discourage the proactive removal of prostate cancer, other experts like Dr. Bawadi advocate the removal of prostate cancer before they cause serious damages in the patient’s body. Based on the experiments conducted by the research team, around 1,200 patients were diagnosed with low risk prostate cancer and having a low Gleason score and PSA level. However when their prostates were analysed, 31 patients were found to be likely to develop severe prostate cancer. Their Gleason scores were upgraded.
These experiments help experts to better understand the relationship between the PSA level of a patient and the size of the prostate. While a small prostate having a high PSA level could mean that the tumour is aggressive, a large prostate with a low PSA level could mean that it is a result of a benign prostatic hyperplasia. Patients are made to undergo a Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test followed by biopsy and assignment of a Gleason score to ascertain the severity of the cancer.