Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock
I once worked at a center where nearly every man was steered toward the same surgery—which even sometimes left part of the tumor behind. That experience stayed with me. It reminded me that prostate cancer care should never feel like being on an assembly line.
6 Issues to Clarify With Your Prostate Specialist
You deserve more than one-size-fits-all answers. You deserve clear explanations. You deserve real options. Above all, you deserve a voice in every decision that affects your health, your longevity, and your quality of life.
1. Understand Your Risk Group
Upon diagnosis, one of the first things you’ll hear is that your cancer falls into a “risk category.” Doctors assign this based on three things:
- Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) Test: Determined by a blood test, levels are used to investigate prostate cancer
- Biopsy Results: Show how many “cores” or tiny tissue samples exhibit cancer and how aggressive it is
- Tumor Stage: TNM staging is a system that describes whether the cancer is confined to the prostate, has spread to nearby tissue, or has spread beyond
The labels sound simple—low risk, intermediate risk, high risk—but they only tell part of the story. They’re like broad “buckets” based on averages across thousands of men.
