There is a paradigm shift happening around us in the clinical care of men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. We now know that survival is better when docetaxel chemotherapy is added to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT), but there have been and still remains concerns about the toxicity of the docetaxel. Recent findings from a new study, [...]
One of the frustrations faced by men in the UK has been the Guideline that restrictes the use of chemotherapy (docetaxel) to only men who have already failed hormone therapy (ADT). This Guideline directly contradicts the current, cutting edge evidence that, in certain circumstances, earlier chemotherapy increases survival. The good news is that the NHS [...]
A story written by Dominic Horsley and published in the Yorkshire Evening Post claims that in May a 41 year old prostate cancer survivor from Woodlesford was referred to specialists at Leeds St James’s Hospital. He claimed that he had aches in his lower body but says t consultants told him that he was told [...]
The Response Evaluation Criteria In Solid Tumors (RECIST) was first published in 2000 and then updated in 2009. RECIST is a set of published rules that attempt to define when cancer tumors, including prostate cancer tumors, improve ("respond"), stay the same ("stabilize"), or worsen ("progress") during treatment. This criteria has become very important as the majority [...]
Clinical trials are used to both demonstrate that a drug or treatment has efficacy (extends life or improves the quality of life). They also are used as the vehicle to obtain approval from the governmental body responsible for monitoring and approving their use. How the trial is set up will directly dictate the eventual approved [...]
Understanding how to best sequence and combine our new drugs to treat advanced prostate cancer includes the most discussed issue, efficacy. We want to know if a special order or a special combination of the approved drugs will nake a difference in both our quality of life (QoL) as well as how survival. Often [...]
As I have said before, the next big step in the clinical care of men with prostate cancer will be in not in the development of a new drug, but in our growing knowledge of how to sequence and combine our new drugs. Today’s post provides just one example of this new type of breakthrough [...]
There have been some randomized studies that have shown that when prednisone is used in combination with docetaxel (chemotherapy) there is an improved survival in men who have metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). To add to our understanding of the possible clinical value of this combination of drugs some researchers have retrospectively evaluated whether the [...]
Men with metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) have become fortunate over the last few years as there we now have a number of new drugs available which can extend our life and can also have some palliative effects. However, as we have more treatments being approved, we find that we are faced with a [...]
Clinical trials for treatment of men with advanced prostate cancer often don’t include men who are considered very elderly (aged over 80 years). So, even if we know that a treatment is tolerable and effective in the average man, we can not assume that it would also be in the very elderly, especially in reference [...]
