Problems with the Prostate Gland

Three main types of problems—infection, enlargement, and cancer—can afflict the prostate.

Prostate infections can be brief or long lasting, mild or severe, easy or difficult to treat. Prostatitis, an often-painful inflammation of the prostate, is fairly common in men from the teen years on. Symptoms of prostatitis can include frequent and/or painful urination, other urinary difficulties, or pain during ejaculation.

Prostate enlargement, called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), is a non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate and actually occurs as part of the normal aging process of the prostate.

Symptoms of an enlarged prostate gland are typical for men over 50 years of age. The increase in size of the gland will commonly cause a decrease in the flow of the urine as it passes through the gland. This will commonly result in difficult urination or a reduced flow of urine with frequent urination at night. Other symptoms include a sensation of incomplete emptying, dribbling of urine and can lead to the complete inability to urinate. Other complications of this enlargement of the prostate include severe kidney problems as well as urinary tract infection. Also, the risk of developing prostate cancer is higher for men with prostate enlargement.

Although men in their twenties can suffer from BPH, it usually surfaces later in life. It's estimated that half of all men have BPH by the age of 60, and 90 percent will suffer from it by age 85.

Prostate cancer is the number-two cancer killer in men. But prostate cancer ordinarily grows slowly and does not, by itself, cause death—if it stays in the prostate. Unfortunately, once the cells that make up prostate cancer have grown inside the prostate for a long enough time to reach a critical mass in size and number of cells, the cancer can spread outside of the prostate gland to other parts of the body. Like boiling water in a pot bubbling over, prostate cancer "pours" out of the prostate gland into the surrounding tissue. Once free of the prostate, the cancer cells can find new homes in the bones, liver, brain, lungs, spinal cord or elsewhere. When that happens, the cancer that was simply annoying becomes deadly. And it often becomes deadly long before anyone knows it exists, for more than 20 percent of all prostate cancers in the U.S. have moved beyond the prostate gland before they are detected.