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 [...]
Increasingly, we have become better informed about the possible role of psychological and spiritual interventions in the treatment of cancer, specifically for this post in men with locally advanced prostate cancer. This post is limited to just discussing the possible interventions specifically in men with a Biochemical Prostate Cancer Recurrence, commonly referred to as a [...]
Yesterday’s post was about the increased risks of developing diabetes faced by men who are on hormone therapy. This study, as well as most others about this topic has looked at the first levels of hormone therapy (ADT) using the traditional drugs like Zoladex, Trelstar, Firmagon, and Lupron. We know very little about the influence [...]
Men who develop bone metastases have often been viewed as having developed a significant negative change that prognosticates a negative impact on both their quality of life and on their survival. Contradicting this commonly held belief has been some research which has identified a subgroup of men with advanced prostate cancer with bone metastases who [...]
Starting androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) to treat advanced prostate cancer is usually the start of a long treatment period that will continue for many years, actually until you die. Since our goal in cancer treatment is to make cancer a chronic illness and since prostate cancer does progress for most men in a relatively slow [...]
Analysis of the PREVAIL Trial showed that Enzalutamide (Xtandi) significantly increased overall survival and radiographic progression-free survival compared with placebo in men with prostate cancer who were asymptomatic and minimally symptomatic, chemotherapy-naive and who had metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). Now, an additional analysis of the data has shown the effect enzalutamide also has on [...]
One of the more difficult problems faced by some men treated with surgery as their primary treatment modality is post-prostatectomy incontinence (PPI). PPI can affect the quality of life for both men successfully treated as well as those who go on and eventually develop advanced prostate cancer. One of the more common, but last efforts [...]
A Small study suggests that alternating testosterone levels may make hormonal therapy work longer A recent very small study was published that might lend a new light on hormone therapy for advanced prostate cancer, Bipolar ADT. This study suggests that a new treatment strategy might be effective where men alternate between low and high levels [...]
Doctors are not trained to communicate with patients. Now, with the onset of electronic medical records this problem has become worse. Many of them hardly even look their patient in the eyes; instead their faces are often buried in the computer screen and not on us. Since they don’t really know us, they stumble around, [...]
There has been much conversation surrounding the use of intermittent androgen deprivation (IAD) as opposed to continuous androgen deprivation (CAD) in men with prostate cancer who need hormone therapy (ADT). The question that has been at issue is if either method is superior to the other. There have been studies that have concluded that they [...]
