Clinical trials are vital if we expect to continue to see improvements in the treatments and medications that are available. Unfortunately, there are some historical abuses in clinical trials so many people do approach them with a level of distrust. In contemporary times the clinical trial system has many safeguards that did not exist even [...]
It has been long assumed that hormone therapy (ADT) used in the treatment of men with advanced prostate cancer increases a man’s risk for developing potentially live threatening thromboembolic disease (formation in a blood vessel of a clot (thrombus) that breaks loose and is carried by the blood stream to plug another vessel. The clot [...]
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 [...]
Go to any support group meeting and you are almost sure to hear someone, usually a new member of the group, ask about what they might do to lower their risk of having their prostate cancer progress or even lower their risk of dying from the prostate cancer. Among the common answer to this question [...]