Men and prostate cancer is talked all over the globe. It is the second commonest cancer in men after lung and head neck cancers. In fact the developed countries like USA, UK now are talking to almost >90 % cure rate for the early stage prostate cancers. In good old days, many patients used to present in advanced stage, the prostate cancer was thought to be disease of elderly and slow growing. We have now realized that , the prostate cancer can present as early as the age of 50 yrs. Aging , smoking ,chronic prostatitis , obesity ( so called metabolic syndrome) and hereditary factors can lead to development of prostate cancer.
Since the PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) testing was introduced, the detection rate of early prostate cancer has significantly increased. The treatment of early prostate cancer is radical prostatectomy or radical radiotherapy. The cure rate is around 90-95% for 10 years. The radical prostatectomy (Removal of prostate, seminal vesicles with preservation of continence and potency) is yet another challenging operation like radical cystectomy and should be only performed by the experts at the tertiary care centers.
Robotic assisted radical prostatectomy is now very popular all over the world. It is extremely important to understand that orchidectomy is only performed if the prostate cancer is spread to the bones and lymph nodes and not otherwise. Similarly routine TURP is not the way to diagnose or treat prostate cancers. These myths have to be cleared at the earliest in the larger interest of the patients. As mentioned, orchidectomy is useful and reserved only for stage IV disease.