A Real Life Experience Using A C-11 Choline Scan To Combat A Prostate Cancer Recurrence

In response to the post I wrote about Choline C-11 on December 11, 2013 Choline C-11 A Second Shot To Halt the Cancer After Primary Treatment Failure one of our group members contact me and shared that he was scheduled to have a similar scan. I asked if he would be willing to share his [...]

ADT Can Cause Nocturia or the Need to Use the Bathroom at Night

One of the common and constant complaints I hear at prostate cancer support groups is about the need to wake during the night and use the bathroom to urinate (nocturia). There is a relationship between our ageing and the need to urinate at night, but it does seem to be made even more acute if [...]

Choline C-11 A Second Shot To Halt The Cancer After Primary Treatment Failure

The dirty little secret that is kept from most of us when we receive primary treatment for prostate cancer is that there is a recurrence rate approaching 33%. This amazingly high rate is consistent no matter what primary treatment is elected. Radiation, surgery, HIFU the rates are the same, about 1/3 of us will experience [...]

Zoledronic Acid (ZA) in Castrate Sensitive Prostate Cancer Does Not Prove To Be Advantageous

One thing I have noticed at some of the support groups I run is that there seems to be a very uneven distribution of when men start taking Zoledronic Acid (ZA). Hormone therapy (ADT) has many negative side effects and the loss of bone mineral density (thinning of the bones) that ZA (and similar drugs) [...]

What Is The Best Treatment For Oligo-Recurrent Prostate Cancer – A Literature Review

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 [...]

Using Circulating Tumor Cells as a Prognostic Tool – Better than PSA

Better prediction tools to predict treatment outcome in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) should significantly improve treatment outcomes. Without good predictive measures we often don't know when is the optimum time to stop a therapy and move to another. This means that we might maturely stop an effective treatment losing the effectiveness of [...]

A Caution About Yesterday’s Post About Combining Treatments with Chemotherapy

My post to this blog that was written yesterday indicated that for certain men the early use of chemotherapy (docetaxil) could provide significant life extending benefits, especially for men with very advanced prostate cancer. For the purpose of clarification, in this case early use means in men who are still hormone responsive. Given that chemotherapy [...]

Early Chemotherapy for Men Who Are Still Hormone Responsive – For Some It Might Offer Extra Survival

When I was first diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer one of the first questions that I asked my doctor was whether it made sense for me to start chemotherapy immediately. I very clearly remember him telling me that there was absolutely no evidence that starting chemotherapy at this early stage would do anything to extend [...]

Does Debulking A Tumor When Initially Diagnosed with Advanced Prostate Cancer Offer An Advantage?

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 [...]

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