Carcinoma of the Prostate

Abstract

One of the most vital problems confronting the urological surgeon today concerns the early recognition and treatment of cancer of the prostate.

Some authors have likened this lesion to a somewhat analogous one occurring in the female breast. In many points they are similar; in many others they are entirely different. Both are essentially diseases of the latter part of middle life. They are similar, also, in their tendency to spread very early by the way of the lymphatic system, in their power to disseminate far and wide, and in their predilection to skeletal metastasis. In neither of these two types of carcinoma is the prognosis as to the duration of life good, and in both the end-results of treatment are still unsatisfactory. Of the two, carcinoma of the prostate appears the more unfavorable.

Oertel (1) points out the similarity in the reaction of breast and prostatic tissues and contends that carcinoid hyperplasia in each of these organs is potentially cancerous, although it does not always develop into cancer. Cheatle (2) calls attention to a sequence of events occurring in the prostate similar to that which is observed in certain diseases of the breast. The cystiphorous desquamative epithelial hyperplasia is transformed into epithelial neoplasia, and this latter condition further changes into true cancerous tissue. In one section of a prostate the author observed all of these three stages.