Prostate Biopsy

Anyone who suspects he may have prostate cancer should consider long and hard before having a prostate biopsy! Even if you have cancer there is only a 25% or less chance the biopsy will find it and if the needle does catch cancer cells...there is something you should ask your urologist about: "NEEDLE TRACK SEEDING". It will be a VERY uncomfortable subject for the doc...since there is a considerable chance the biopsy needle will drag cancer cells out of the prostatic capsule and "seed" them into the rest of your body. Consider the information that follows:

"In The New England Journal of medicine Dr. Fritz Schroder and Dr. Ries Krause from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands were asked if prostate biopsies really save lives. Their answer was, "No."

Only 1 out 4 of these biopsies was able to even detect cancer. The reason for this is: The way a prostate biospy is performed is a needle is inserted into the prostate gland. Then, very small sections of prostate tissue are extracted from 6 - 45 different areas within the prostate gland.

But, the needle may not even go where a cancer exists. Some call it the "needle in a haystack search".

A negative biopsy does not rule out prostate cancer. So, it is common to find repeat biopsys being performed. And still, any cancer may go undetected.

Prostate Cancer and Biopsy Dangers

Prostate cancer, in most cases, does not travel. It remains confined to the prostate.

If the man actually does have prostate cancer, a prostate biopsy usually releases cancer cells into the blood stream. These cancer cells then travel through the body where they can potentially colonize and grow.

The importance of this knowledge is that when a body has a cancer tumor that is confined (as prostate cancer tumors usually are) you do not want to be breaking them up and sending the cells into a blood stream where the immune system is already unable to destroy mutating cells.

A normally healthy body easily destroys stray cancer cells.

When you really understand what cancer is, you know that cancer itself is not a localized condition. It is a condition of an impaired immune system. The tumor is really a symtom of the actual disease. It is not the disease itself.

You do not catch cancer like you catch a cold or the flu. This has been repeatedly proven in the 1950s and 1960s when live cancer cells were injected into healthy human subjects. The cancer cells simply could not survive and grow."