When Degarelix (FIRMAGON) which is a gonadotrophin-releasing hormone (GnRH) receptor blocker was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) I contacted Ferring Pharmaceuticals and spoke with their medical director. I asked if Degarelix could be used as a second line hormone therapy drug after the traditional first line GnRH agonist drugs (Lupron etc.) [...]
A member of the advanced prostate cancer on-line support group who is the wife of an advanced prostate cancer survivor in New Mexico just informed us that Trailblazer (the MAC that controls New Mexico reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid) has said they will not pay for her husband to get Provenge. They were also told [...]
HIFU has been a common primary prostate cancer treatment in Europe for quite a while. Currently, in the United States, there are a number of clinical trial sites evaluating HIFU as a primary treatment. Like all other primary treatments there is a significant failure rate causing men to move on to salvage therapy. In Europe [...]
A group of researchers from the Dipartimento di Endocrinologia ed Oncologia Clinica e Molecolare, Università Federico II, Napoli, Italy wanted to know if retreatment with docetaxel could be tolerated and have a positive effect in men with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) who have already failed chemotherapy. The researchers evaluated 45 men who had initially responded [...]
Sanofi-aventis, the pharmaceutical company that makes taxotere and the newly approved drug, Jevtana (cabazitaxel) yesterday announced that their newly approved treatment for men with metastatic hormone-refractory prostate cancer (mHRPC) who have been previously treated with a docetaxel-based treatment regimen and failed is finally available for distribution in the United States. Around one month ago, Jevtana [...]
The common question when we are diagnosed with prostate cancer is how long do I have to live? The exact same question is asked again when we discover that we have had a prostate cancer recurrence. Times have changed and so has our potential life span. In the late 1980s and early 1990s men diagnosed [...]
There has been a lot of questions raised about why the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has out of the clear blue, launched a review of Provenge, a review that could ultimately make Provenge unavailable to men on Medicare and Medicaid (see the post:Medicare Funding for Provenge, We Urgently Need Your HELP). There [...]
Yesterdays Wall Street Journal publish a very important piece by Melinda Beck in their Health Journal (http://tinyurl.com/2dtrrll) . Everyone should go to the piece and read it. The piece, The Prostate Cancer Quandary, has received some play in the prostate community, but its real importance to us has not yet been recognized by our community [...]
Those of us advanced prostate cancer survivors who are younger than 65 years and who live in the United States often face a major dilemma if we are unable to continue to work. Medicare will not provide us with medical insurance until we reach that magic age of 65 years. We can apply for social [...]
Physicians at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s 35th Annual Scientific Meeting in Tampa, FL announced that they have treated men using magnetic resonance-guided heat (laser interstitial thermal therapy) or cold (cryoablation) to treat prostate cancer recurrence after surgical removal of the prostate gland. Many of these men have already failed salvage radiation treatment. [...]
