How often have I said that when you are diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer or when you experience a recurrence you need to move on to a specialist, a medical oncologist who specializes in the treatment of men with advanced prostate cancer? It is easier and more comfortable to stay with the known doctor, the [...]
The simple answer is NO, however it should change your treatment game plan. A member of one of my support groups who has been doing active surveillance for about 5 years recently reported that their current biopsy indicated that they now have perineural invasion (PNI). They did not understand what was the significance of [...]
A very interesting article appeared in the Saturday, November 24, 2012 edition of the Washington Post. According to the article The New England Journal of Medicine which is among the most prestigious medical journal in the world regularly features articles over which pharmaceutical companies and their employees exert significant influence. The problem is simple, over [...]
Having hot flashes because of hormone deprivation therapy (ADT)? All of us dealing with advanced prostate cancer will be on ADT, it is the usual first line of therapy and it will continue until we die. Men who elect to have radiation to treat prostate cancer as their primary treatment modality will often have some [...]
Genomic Health, Inc. has announced they have had positive results from a large clinical validation study of a biopsy-based prostate cancer test designed to predict adverse pathology in men with early prostate cancer. The study, performed in collaboration with prostate cancer researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), met its primary endpoint by [...]
In an updated study published in the New England Journal of Medicine men who had a radical prostatectomy did not enjoy the experience of a reduced all-cause mortality or prostate cancer mortality compared with those men who had only observation through several years of follow-up. The subject men had localized prostate cancer often detected by [...]
Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is an old standby for the treatment of men with metastatic or advanced prostate cancer. We have long known that testosterone plays an integral role in the progression of prostate cancer, thus we often use it as an initial treatment for men who become metastatic. ADT is used both for men [...]
There has been an on-going debate on the advanced prostate cancer on-line support group about the issue of the efficacy of Provenge in light of the expectation of a person's increasing PSA number while getting the treatment. For many men with advanced prostate cancer this is a reason they elect to pass on this treatment [...]
According to the results of a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology a bone scan index (BSI) can assess response to treatment and predict survival in metastatic hormone-refractory prostate cancer. Men who have castrate resistant or metastatic hormone-refractory prostate cancer that no longer responds to hormonal therapy and has spread to distant sites [...]
Today, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) posted its prostate cancer screening final recommendation statement. The following letter was received by anyone who posted a public comment: The USPSTF is committed to making the recommendations process clear and transparent and we are able to achieve that by keeping the public fully informed throughout the [...]
