What is Your Prostate?

The size of the prostate varies with age. As a man ages, the prostate can grow larger.

The prostate has several important functions:

• Helps control urine flow, semen, and seminal fluid
• Essential for erections
• Produces seminal fluid to carry and nourish sperm
• Contains nerves needed to achieve an erection
• Provides the push sperm need to swim their way out of the penis
• Produces prostate specific antigen

The prostate is divided into lobes and zones. There are four lobes: anterior, median, lateral, and posterior. There are three zones: peripheral, central, and transitional. These terms refer to specific areas of the prostate to help the physician know where the cancer is located in the prostate.

Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) is a substance produced by the prostate gland. It keeps semen in liquid form so sperm can swim. It is present in the bloodstream, and the level is a valuable piece of information in understanding a man’s prostate cancer risk, along with the digital rectal exam and other tests.

The level of PSA in a man’s blood can be a marker of many different prostate conditions, not only prostate cancer. The most frequent benign (non-cancerous) conditions that cause an elevation in PSA are the following:

• Prostatitis – inflammation of the prostate
• Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BHP) – enlargement of the prostate