Worcestershire man joins call for prostate cancer tests to be 'less evasive' after being diagnosed himself
56-year-old Glen Pearson from Redditch was diagnosed in January 2024 and has undergone an operation to remove the cancer
A Worcestershire man says going for a blood test as part of his prostate cancer diagnosis made him feel much more comfortable about it than he would've done going for a prostate exam.
Redditch's Glen Pearson was diagnosed in January 2024 and underwent an operation in April last year to remove the cancer.
He's joining a national call from the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) who have pledged to work with NHS bosses to advise GPs that men with suspected prostate cancer don’t need to have a prostate exam before being referred for further tests.
They suggest a PSA blood test can used initially instead and men should then be referred for an MRI scan, which will give a more accurate indication of whether they have cancer.
A PSA test is a blood test that measures the amount of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in your blood, high levels may be a sign of a prostate condition but not necessarily cancer.
56-year-old Mr Pearson says having the 'less evasive' blood test encouraged him more to go for tests and feels as though it would be the same for others.
"Nobody wants to have a test where somebody's doing something that you don't feel particularly comfortable with"
"I think if it would have been the other test I'd have been a bit more reluctant to go," he said.
"As it was a blood test and I've had blood tests for other things, it was a case of yeah, let's get the blood test and see where we are.
"Nobody wants to have a test where somebody's doing something that you don't feel particularly comfortable with."
1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime according to statistics from Prostate Cancer UK, with prostate cancer being the most commonly diagnosed cancer now in England.
The charity also found in a recent survey of men who completed their risk checker, around 750 men said they’d asked their GP for a PSA blood test and a third of these men were offered a prostate exam as well as a blood test.
Mr Pearson says he hopes by sharing his story he can encourage more men to go and get checked and break any stigmas they have about going for a check-up.
"It's important to talk to somebody"
He said: "The initial reason for taking the test and getting tested was during the summer I'd been drinking a lot of fluids, waking up in the night to go to the toilet a lot, and when it got to the autumn, I was still getting up to go to the toilet a lot and I decided that maybe there was an issue.
"I was born in an era where you didn't talk about it, you didn't discuss it, but two years ago, I realised from speaking to people of my age who were going through the same sort of thing or similar, it becomes a lot more obvious that not talking about it creates more of a problem.
"It's important to talk to somebody, even if it's not your GP initially, but talk to somebody, because if you don't talk to somebody, people don't understand the problems or the issues that you might have and as soon as you talk to somebody, it's much easier then to do something about it."