How is prostate cancer diagnosed and staged?
If you have symptoms suspicious for prostate cancer, your doctor will do a digital rectal exam and a PSA blood test. If either of those two test are abnormal, then most likely your doctor will recommend that you receive a biopsy. Also, your doctor may want to get a biopsy if there is an abnormal result on a screening PSA or digital rectal exam. A biopsy is the only way to know for sure if you have cancer, because it allows your doctors to get cells that can be examined under a microscope. The most common way that a biopsy is done is with a transrectal ultrasound (TRUS). A transrectal ultrasound is a thin cylinder that emits sound waves and monitors them when they bounce off of tissue. It is inserted into your rectum, and allows your doctor to view your prostate and choose where to remove tissue from. Any suspicious areas are biopsied, plus some tissue will be removed from all of the different parts of the prostate (to make sure they don’t miss any cancers that may be small and growing
