{"id":626497,"date":"2026-10-10T15:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T15:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/626497\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T15:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T15:48:10","slug":"the-1-thing-to-remember-about-your-prostate-cancer-screening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/626497\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1 Thing To Remember About Your Prostate Cancer Screening"},"content":{"rendered":"

TODAY\u2019s Never Have I Ever<\/a> series offers guidance about procedures and practices our trusted health experts would never participate in. Discover why they should be avoided and which healthy practices you should turn to instead.<\/p>\n

Cancer screenings are essential to finding and diagnosing illness before symptoms begin and disease spreads. They\u2019re especially important for certain cancers that don\u2019t cause symptoms in the early stages. In these cases, screening can make all the difference in getting treatment as soon as possible, and prostate cancer<\/a> is no exception.<\/p>\n

Should you and your doctor decide<\/a> you should be screened for prostate cancer, you\u2019ll likely get a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, which measures the amount of a protein called PSA found in the blood. An abnormal PSA level is typically one that\u2019s elevated.<\/p>\n

Should your doctor find you have higher PSA levels than normal, you may be tempted to immediately link those results to a prostate cancer diagnosis. One expert says, however, that\u2019s only the first step. <\/p>\n

Never Have I Ever: Assumed One Normal PSA Result Means I\u2019m Done Screening<\/p>\n

\u201cOne test is not sufficient,\u201d Dr. Firas Abdollah<\/a>, urologist at Henry Ford Health, tells TODAY.com. It\u2019s a single snapshot of someone\u2019s overall health.<\/p>\n

Although it\u2019s useful data, your PSA levels aren\u2019t absolute. Instead, they\u2019re the first clue that something might be off with your health, he explains. <\/p>\n

In fact, in rare cases, someone with prostate cancer could have normal PSA levels, while someone else might have elevated PSA levels because of a medication they\u2019re taking, a prostate infection, a recent medical procedure or even riding a bike, without cancer being present at all. <\/p>\n

PSA levels, he explains, can also change over time.<\/p>\n

What to Do Instead<\/p>\n

A normal PSA falls between 3.5-4 nanograms per milliliter, explains Abdollah. Those with prostate cancer will typically have a PSA level above that range. If someone\u2019s PSA is higher than 10, there\u2019s a 50% chance they\u2019ll have prostate cancer, according to the American Cancer Society<\/a>. Only 15% of those with prostate cancer will fall below that normal range. <\/p>\n

If your PSA results are abnormal, prepare for even more screening. Because prostate cancer is a silent and slow-growing cancer, your doctor will send you to a urologist for closer inspection.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s most of the patients that I see in my clinic,\u201d says Abdollah. \u201cMost of them are a little bit surprised. They\u2019re like, \u2018I feel nothing. Nothing is wrong with me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I explain to them that most of the time symptoms are not a good indicator of prostate cancer, and many people with prostate cancer don\u2019t have any significant symptoms. This is why we have to depend on the screening (with) the PSA to find things early,\u201d he adds. <\/p>\n

So, he\u2019ll look deeper, sometimes scheduling the patient for a biopsy, during which the doctor will take a small of the prostate and look for cancer cells under a microscope. This tends to happen if the patient\u2019s PSA is especially high.<\/p>\n

For others, he\u2019ll schedule another PSA test, usually for the following year, to monitor any further changes before requesting a biopsy for cancer which may not be present or spreading, or may not be there at all.<\/p>\n

It all depends on the patient and their data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TODAY\u2019s Never Have I Ever series offers guidance about procedures and practices our trusted health experts would never…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[134,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-626497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}