Cancers in the early stages do not usually cause any problems! Preventative medical check-ups are a wise investment into one’s own health: in some cases it can save your life!
With as little inconvenience and worry as possible the preventative medical check-up should provide a clear a picture as possible about the presence of a malignant illness.

Ranking of the most common cancers in men

1. The most common cancer of a man in Europe is prostate cancer
2. Lung cancer, until now had first place
3. Malignant diseases of the gastro-intestinal tract: colon cancer, rectum cancer and stomach cancer
4. The bladder carcinoma
5. The malignant tumour of the kidney

From these most common cancers four alone are found by urologists and three – prostate, bladder and kidney cancer – can be completely self-treated!

The legal preventative medical check-up takes these findings into account. Therefore the “feeling” of the prostate as well as a stool sample analysis is covered by the public health insurance companies. Through this feeling, however, only ten percent of possible carcinomas are discovered!

A scientifically based check-up also includes further tests. An important factor in the preventative medical check-up with regard the carcinoma of the prostate is the establishing of the PSA value (prostate-specific antigen) as well as the trans-rectal prostate ultrasound.

The combination of these tests has led to the discovery of almost 90 percent of prostate cancers in Germany while they are still curable.

Exyamination with the finger, i.e. rectal palpation of the prostate has a success rate of only ten percent.
Carcinoma of the lungs cannot be diagnosed by a preventative medical check-up. Theoretically, regular CT-scans (computerized tomography) need to be carried out to discover carcinomas when they are still curable. As this includes being subject to high doses of radiation, regular check-ups themselves would probably lead to lung cancer after 20 years.

Magnetic resonance tomography (MRI) is not perfectly suited for testing the lungs. The imaging takes so long that most of the patients are not able to hold their breath for as long as is needed – one and a half minutes. Breathing causes a distortion of the image which then cannot be properly interpreted by the doctor.