I know, we all have our prostate cancer story where we are told how lucky we are that we have prostate cancer. The conversation goes on something like, “Oh you are so lucky, you have the GOOD cancer, you should be so thankful.” Then it is often followed up by something like, “My (father) (brother) [...]
The common question when we are diagnosed with prostate cancer is how long do I have to live? The exact same question is asked again when we discover that we have had a prostate cancer recurrence. Times have changed and so has our potential life span. In the late 1980s and early 1990s men diagnosed [...]
Findings from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) screening trial indicate that the strongest predictors of prostate cancer-specific mortality include Gleason 7, body mass index >30, African-American race, PSA level, stage, and high co-morbidity score. Understanding how non-tumor factors affect prostate cancer-specific mortality will help identify those men who may benefit from screening and [...]
Breast cancer in men is rare, but men do develop it. Male breast cancer accounts for less than 1% of all breast cancer cases. Other than the incidence rate, male breast cancer is similar to breast cancer in women. […]
Finasteride, which remains a controversial drug in the treatment of men with advanced prostate cancer, prolongs the time of off-treatment in men with advanced prostate cancer when they are using intermittent androgen suppression therapy (IAD). One of the questions not yet understood is whether this results from a true increase in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) doubling [...]
There has been a lot of questions raised about why the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has out of the clear blue, launched a review of Provenge, a review that could ultimately make Provenge unavailable to men on Medicare and Medicaid (see the post:Medicare Funding for Provenge, We Urgently Need Your HELP). There [...]
Mike Scott who writes the THE “NEW” PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK today published an excellent summary/discussion about survival time for men with metastatic prostate cancer. He presents a synopsis about anticipated survival going back to the late 1980s and brings the conversation up to our current condition. He reminds us that our next big step will [...]
Statin drugs improve blood cholesterol levels, but they also cause problems. They also seem to lower the risk of prostate cancer recurrences post surgery by as much as 30% according to researchers at Duke University. These findings are published in the journal Cancer. Stephen Freedland, M.D., a member of the Duke Prostate Center and the [...]
How are funding decisions made for Medicare and Medicaid? What drugs are to be funded? These questions have recently come to our attention as many of us have attempted to have Medicare fund our use of Provenge. The administration of Medicare is actually broken into 15 different regions, or MACs (Medicare Administrative Contractors). Each MAC [...]
Those of us advanced prostate cancer survivors who are younger than 65 years and who live in the United States often face a major dilemma if we are unable to continue to work. Medicare will not provide us with medical insurance until we reach that magic age of 65 years. We can apply for social [...]
