Anatomy of the Prostate

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Dr. Susan Jewell and on behalf of Expert Village today I am going to talk to you about how to detect prostate cancer. Now in this clip we are going to talk about the anatomy and the location of the prostate gland, were it's found in the male reproductive system. It's important to know where the prostate gland is, because then you will understand why, if you have prostate cancer or you have problems with the prostate gland, you get the appropriate particular signs and symptoms from it. And also to know why the doctor, medical doctor would do a prostate examination going through the rectum, because of the unique position of this particular gland. Now let?s go and look at a diagram of the male reproductive system. Here is a picture of the male reproductive system and as you can see here this is the hip bone here. Now the prostate gland is actually this piece here, this little light pinkish area- that's the prostate gland and above it in a superior position is the bladder. And in the inferior location you could see that here is the penis gland and here is the testicles is sitting in the scrotum. So if we go over here then you can see a side view of the previous diagram and here you can see the hipbone here, and here is the prostate gland sitting here is this position. And here is the penis gland and the testicles sitting in the scrotum. But let's go down to the pictorial picture and you can see why, where the positioning of the prostate gland and why the physician does a prostate examination through the rectum. Because look at the position of the prostate here, above is the bladder, here is the penis, and here behind it, behind the posterior position of the prostate gland is the colon, and here is the rectum. So it's important to know the positioning and the anatomy of the prostate gland."