Category: Prostate Cancer

The arrival of the Novel Coronavirus quickly became a pandemic. Shortages of medical resources like personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare personnel and ventilators for hospitalized patients took an unprecedented toll on lives. Now, as I write this in early June, the U.S. is gradually reopening after months of lockdown. I look back from this keep reading

Riddles don’t seem to be popular anymore for entertaining kids, now that they use devices for games and amusements. In the “good old days” there was a kind of riddle in which one thing is improbably crossed with another, as in “What do you get when you cross a chicken with a centipede?” The answer, keep reading

Question: What is a consequence of getting older that bothers men? Answer: Disrupted sleep due to more frequent nighttime bathroom trips. The increased need to pee at night is almost always due to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which is a normal aging-related noncancerous gland enlargement. To the relief of many men who would love to keep reading

I’ve been noticing some confusion among patients over the traditional Gleason score system and the new Gleason Grade Group system. I figured it’s time for a quick review and refresher course. You’ll be relieved to know there are no quizzes, midterms or final exams! However, it’s all about grades—but not the kind you get in keep reading

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden.” – Healthyplace.com A 2020 paper opens with the statement: “Men diagnosed with prostate cancer have a heightened risk for major depressive disorder, with rates exceeding those keep reading

Is there any human being who would greet a cancer diagnosis with good cheer? I suspect not, because it’s not good news. It automatically triggers the most basic of all fears: am I going to die? Even the most optimistic or logical person can’t keep that question from popping up, at least momentarily. If the keep reading

If you were suddenly kidnapped and blindfolded, then abandoned in a foreign land, you would want the best possible map to get safely to the border where you could figure out a homeward-bound plan. For men who are diagnosed with high-risk prostate cancer (PCa), it’s as if a hostile unknown enemy has abducted them, deprived keep reading

I wonder how many men put off getting a physical because of the digital rectal exam (DRE)? While the DRE has comic value in movie and TV scenes (the doctor snaps on a rubber glove while the man on the table looks like he’d rather walk on hot coals), a question circulating among urologists and keep reading

A diabetic man aged 76 with no history of prostate cancer (PCa) comes to his primary care physician (PCP) for his annual wellness visit. (Sidebar: in the good old days they were called physicals, but in today’s Medicare world, they’re annual wellness visits—and yes, there is a difference but that’s for another day.) He fasted keep reading

No one can dispute the superiority of multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) over transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) for detecting and characterizing prostate cancer (PCa) before biopsy and treatment. The past five years alone have seen a rapid accumulation of research evidence that mpMRI makes it possible to save medical dollars by avoiding unnecessary biopsies and their risks. While keep reading