A man in the advanced prostate cancer online support group has asked, “Why the radiation (external beam to relieve bone pain from prostate cancer and to protect the bones from fractures) is given in so many "mini" doses rather than one or two larger doses. The answer is it doesn't necessarily have to be delivered [...]
Somehow I have been negligent and not let people know that I have written and posted a major update of my “Guide to Advanced Prostate Cancer.” As in the past, it is available as a free download from the Malecare web site. Helping me to update the book was prostate cancer survivor Craig Pynn and [...]
The standard of treatment for men who have a localized recurrence in lymph nodes (LN) after surgery is intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) as well as with men who have high-risk prostate cancer which includes cancer in both the prostate and seminal vesicles (SV). As with all treatments the use of IMRT comes with many [...]
When I had my prostate cancer recurrence it was characterized by a PSA in the mid 80s and a few positive lymph nodes showing on scans. My situation (oligo-recurrent prostate cancer) was described in a recent literature review called Salvage Therapy of Small Volume Prostate Cancer Nodal Failures: A Review of the Literature. The review [...]
Men initially diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer often face a serious question, whether traditional primary treatments that would remove or make smaller their primary tumor (“debulking” the tumor) provide any advantage or extend their survival. Since the most commonly used method to debulk tumors is surgery or radiation the question becomes if the risks of [...]
Extra radiation will not keep the doctor away, so why do we use it? According to a recent study published in the Oct. 9 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association most men who are given radiation to control pain from bone metastasis accompanying advanced prostate cancer undergo more treatments than they really [...]
A few days ago I wrote about Malecare’s new program addition, Start A Cure in my post “Announcing A New Research Platform – Start A Cure.” The program goal is to raise funding for cancer research by allowing each of us, as individuals, to pick the projects we want to fund and then to make [...]
A joint task force composed of members from the American Urological Association (AUA) and the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has presented formal guidelines for the use of adjuvant and salvage radiation after a radical prostatectomy. To construct the Guideline they relied on a systematic review of the literature using the Pubmed, Embase and [...]
Men who are diagnosed with high risk prostate cancer, meaning they are more likely to develop advanced prostate cancer are usually treated with Radiotherapy (RT) and long term androgen blockade (AB). Currently, we do not know what is the optimal duration of AB. Looking at this problem, the researchers conducted a randomized study to compare [...]
On Thursday evening I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Oliver Sartor from the University of Tulane. At that time he informed me that Bayer had finally submitted the required paperwork to the FDA for formal approval of radium-233 chloride. For those of you who are not familiar with Dr. Sartor, he is both an [...]
