Late Stages of Prostate Cancer

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is Dr. Susan Jewell and in this clip I am going to talk to you about the signs and symptoms of late prostate cancer. Now when you get bone pain in the hips or the lower back or in other areas of your skeletal structure then that is a red warning sign that the prostate cancer itself has probably spread out of the gland itself and that is a very serious problem that you need to counter with. One hopes that you don't get those symptoms before you go and get checked out. Why do you have bone pain when the cancer has spread out of the prostate gland itself? First of all let's look at the anatomy of the skeletal system of the male of the human body. Here you can see, here is the vertebra. This is the hip region here, the ilium, the sacrum, and down here joining the hip is the hip joint and the thigh bone and here of course the lower fibula and the toes and the feet. The prostate gland is located in this area here in between the hip and the toes and the feet. The prostate gland is located within this area here in between the hip area and the sacral area. Now let's go and look at a picture of a drawing of the prostate gland in its location. You can see here is the hip bone here, the pelvis, the sacrum back here, and here is the bladder and this area here is the prostate gland sitting in between these two bony structures and of course you are going to get the hip bones and the thigh bones going down. If you look at the side view you can see where the prostate gland is sitting in the sacral area. Back here is the hip joint and here is the iliac bone or the pelvis. When the tumor or prostate cancer actually spreads outside the gland itself it is then going to penetrate into the muscular walls that surround the gland and eventually it is going to spread into the bones and that is at the very late stage of prostate cancer and if you are going to get bone pain especially in the hip area and the lower abdominal or pelvic area then it is a very ominous sign that it has spread outside of the gland."