Oh, those weekends, don’t you just love them? They provide us with an opportunity to spend time with our families, drive to the country house or go to the theater. Now, we know they also provide us with an increased opportunity to die in a hospital. Research shows that men with metastatic prostate cancer who [...]
I attend the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago in May. As usual, it was exciting and it provides me with a fantastic opportunity to catch up with the current research in advanced prostate cancer. It also gives me an opportunity to meet with and have private conversations with some of the [...]
In the treatment of prostate cancer the first very expensive drug we had that was FDA approved was Provenge, with an initial cost of $93,000 for a one-month’s treatment protocol. Today, the cost is in excess of $106,000. According to the phase III clinical trial result Provenge extends life by a median of 4.1 months, [...]
In a study performed in the UK researchers explored how men with advanced prostate cancer support their personal well being. The study analyzed the practices used by five (5) men with advanced prostate cancer to maintain their emotional wellbeing. Information about the men’s individual practices was taken from face-to-face, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with the five [...]
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 [...]
Appearing in the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging a recent study provides data on the long-term survival of men with a biochemical recurrence after failed surgery. In the study by Giovacchini et al. it was shown that a PET/CT scan (specifically a [11C] choline PET/CT) could predict the long-term survival of men [...]
Survivorship and survivorship care increasingly takes on a more important role in the care of cancer patients. Over time we will continue to see an ever increasingly emphasize on survivorship as our medical interventions improve, expanding the number of cancer survivors. Today, cancer survivors are becoming a force, demanding increasing research dollars (although not as [...]
Cancer survivors have many additional problems in their life. I guess the most significant problem is that we have a life threatening illness. So, why are we forced to have to worry if our medications will be paid for or if we are able to afford to pay for them? When we are fighting for [...]
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, [...]
My wife Wendy wrote a post to the advanced prostate cancer online support group where she discussed our recent experience re-entering the healthcare system to deal with a non-prostate cancer issue. In the post she shared that I have been diagnosed with a rare cancer, appendiceal cancer, specifically a mucinous cystadenocarcinoma. We have become very [...]
