What Tests Help My Doctor Find Prostate Cancer?
To find out whether you have prostate cancer, your doctor will ask you questions and run some tests. You will talk about the following issues:
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Your medical history
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Your family history of cancer
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Other factors that may make you more likely to get cancer, such as age, diet, and lifestyle
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Any symptoms you are having, such as problems urinating
Your doctor may also do some tests. These are the tests that screen for prostate cancer.
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Digital rectal exam (DRE). For this test, a doctor or nurse inserts a lubricated, gloved finger into your rectum to check for lumps or hard swellings on your prostate.
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Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. For this test, you give a small sample of your blood. Then it’s sent to a lab to be checked. All men have a small amount of PSA in their blood. But when the prostate is irritated, inflamed, or damaged, as it is when you have prostate cancer, the test shows a higher level of PSA. However, a high PSA level doesn’t necessarily mean you have prostate cancer.
The PSA test and the DRE are usually used together to check for cancer. If you haven’t already had one or both of these tests and are having prostate-cancer-like symptoms, your doctor may decide to do them to find out why.
Your doctor uses the results of these tests to decide whether to take a biopsy to look for cancer.
