To plan treatment, your doctor needs to know the stage of your disease. The tumor may be found by a needle biopsy that is done because a blood test showed an elevated PSA level or it may be felt in the prostate during a rectal examination, even though the cancer cells are found only in the prostate gland. There are treatments for all patients with cancer of the prostate. Surgery is a common treatment of cancer of the prostate. Your doctor may take out the cancer using one of the following operations.
Radical prostatectomy is the removal of the prostate and some of the tissue around it.
Radical prostatectomy is done only if the cancer has not spread outside the prostate. Often before the prostatectomy is done, your doctor will do surgery to take out lymph nodes in the pelvis to see if they contain cancer. This is called a pelvic lymph node dissection. If the lymph nodes contain cancer, usually your doctor will not do a prostatectomy and may or may not recommend other therapy at this time. Impotence and leakage of urine from the bladder can occur in men treated with surgery.