Agapios Chiratos, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer at 61, is urging men to be screened even if they have no symptoms, saying early diagnosis and treatment allowed him to keep his prostate with no change to his quality of life.
The 68-year-old spoke to Phileleftheros for men’s cancer awareness month. “Early diagnosis and immediate treatment are the key to prostate cancer being curable, and I am a living example,” he said.
Diagnosis
In autumn 2019, Chiratos happened to see a television campaign by Europa Uomo stressing the need for men over 45 to 50 to be screened for prostate cancer.
“Personally, I didn’t take it seriously, because I had neither symptoms nor the slightest idea that I could have prostate cancer,” he said.
His wife kept urging him to be tested, eventually enlisting their daughter, and he went to see a urologist. A digital rectal examination found his prostate ‘youthful’ in size and softness.
“Although the digital examination was good, my experienced urologist urged me to have a blood test as well, the well-known PSA. It showed I had a high PSA level, around 6.5 to 7,” he said.
A biopsy in spring 2020 took five or six samples from nodules, all of which proved cancerous. “My doctor reassured me from the first moment, telling me the disease was at an early stage and that it was treatable and curable,” he said.
Conflicting advice
After the diagnosis, Chiratos received sharply conflicting medical advice. One surgeon pressed him to have his prostate removed immediately, warning him that time was slipping by and that he was delaying his decision.
“Sometimes, from doctor to doctor, the opinion, position and guidance can differ, depending on any financial interests at play,” he said. “So if I had panicked at what the surgeon said, I would have had my prostate removed for no reason, as it turned out afterwards.”
He advises patients not to act in haste and always to seek the opinions of several specialists.
Treatment
Chiratos consulted four specialists in all, including oncologists and surgeons, and also sent his results to the German Oncology Center, which he had deliberately left until last. Two or three days later, the centre called to say it could treat him.
An oncologist there confirmed that his condition was treatable. “He told me there was no reason to worry, advised me not to rush my decision, and said that when I made up my mind he would be by my side. And that’s how it was,” Chiratos said.
After weighing it up with his family, he decided there was no reason to delay, adding that the meeting had convinced him the centre could be trusted. In November 2020 he underwent brachytherapy in two sessions 15 days apart.
Describing the procedure, he said: “Essentially, it is a procedure in which they first map the nodules so they know where they are, and mark them. Then, in an operation under full anaesthesia, they follow the mapping and, with a thin tube containing a needle, insert a liquid that essentially burns the cancerous nodules.”
He said it was completely painless and that he did not notice any intervention in his body after either session.
Results
Tests after the treatment showed it had worked, he said, and he is now following a ten-year programme of follow-up tests.
His PSA fell by about two units in the first year. In the second year it fell further, and when he asked his doctor how low it could go, he was told that around 2 to 2.5 would be very satisfactory.
“Today, I am pleased to say that the gradual fall continued, to the point that in my last test, four or five months ago, it had dropped to 0.11,” he said.
“It went exceptionally well, because I have my prostate. I didn’t have it removed,” he said, crediting first the pressure on him to get tested and second the very early diagnosis and treatment.
Why timing matters
“I can wholeheartedly state, support and urge people, whether or not they have any symptoms, to have screening tests so they know, because none of us is in a position to know whether we have the disease,” he said. It was good for all men to be tested after the age of 45 to 50, as specialists set out, he added.
He warned that “because of the many vessels and nerves in the pelvis, it is easy for a cancer cell to escape”, and that once symptoms appear, treatment can affect quality of life.
