Why the prostate causes trouble
The prostate sits below the bladder and surrounds the urethra. It grows slowly throughout adult life, and as it grows it can press on the urethra and change the way you pass urine. That is benign prostatic enlargement, and it is extremely common with age. It is not cancer.
Symptoms worth getting checked
- Getting up at night to pass urine
- A weak or interrupted stream, or straining to start
- Urgency, frequency, or the feeling that the bladder has not emptied
- Discomfort in the pelvis, or pain on passing urine
- Blood in the urine or semen
Understanding your PSA
PSA is a protein made by the prostate and measured with a blood test. A raised PSA can indicate prostate cancer, but it also rises with age, with benign enlargement, with infection, and after some ordinary activities. A single number in isolation rarely means much.
What matters is your PSA read alongside your age, your examination, your history and how the number has changed over time. That interpretation is exactly what a urology consultation is for — and it is often the difference between an unnecessary biopsy and a necessary one.
What an assessment involves
A full history of your symptoms and how much they bother you, an examination, a review of your bloodwork, and a clear discussion of what the findings mean. Depending on what that picture shows, assessment may include:
- Serial PSA monitoring — tracking your PSA over time rather than reacting to a single reading, since the trend is usually more informative than one number.
- Digital rectal examination — a brief physical examination of the prostate to assess its size, texture and any irregularity.
- MRI imaging of the prostate — detailed imaging that can identify areas of concern, and often helps determine whether a biopsy is needed at all.
Where further tests are genuinely useful they will be arranged; where they are not, Dr. Mattar will tell you so.
Treatment
Options range from watchful waiting and lifestyle measures through to medication that relaxes or shrinks the prostate, and procedures where symptoms are severe or medication has not worked. The right answer depends on how much the symptoms actually affect your life, and that is your call to make with the facts in front of you.