Category: Prostate Cancer

Advances in medicine sometimes involve hybrid technologies, often with stunning results. Just as hybrid cars produce vehicles that offer the best of two worlds in one, integrating two different medical imaging technologies can accomplish the same goal. PET and MRI scans Combining Positron Emitting Tomography (PET) scanning with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) boosts the accuracy keep reading

Prostate cancer is considered highly curable when it is detected early! This is also when a patient has the most treatment choices, including Active Surveillance and focal therapy with few to no side effects. The problem is, early stage prostate cancer is a silent lurker with no symptoms. However... keep reading

Over 1,200,000 men around the globe are diagnosed with prostate cancer (PCa) every year. They don’t all have the same disease, however. There are numerous cell lines with varying characteristics: “The disease is very heterogeneous in terms of grade, genetics, ploidy, and oncogene/tumor suppressor gene expression, and its biological, hormonal, and molecular characteristics are extremely keep reading

Contrast agent Before addressing the title question regarding safety, it’s important to understand what a contrast agent does during MRI prostate imaging. Multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) of the prostate relies on two or more imaging sequences, or parameters, each of which depicts certain tissue characteristics that the others do not. When the results are synchronized, we keep reading

In the 5+ years since we posted the blog below, a new grading system called Gleason grade group has simplified the two-number system, which was confusing for patients. For example, in Gleason 7 prostate cancer (PCa), what’s the difference between... keep reading

Melatonin is a hormone that contributes to the smooth functioning of our sleep-wake cycle. It is produced by the pineal gland, a very small structure in the center of the brain, and secreted into the blood. Production of melatonin is “switched off” by light coming into the eye and... keep reading

Does coffee ever go out of style? We think not. If anything, the unquenchable thirst for the perfect brew has driven the pervasive presence of franchises from coast to coast. Its widespread consumption may actually have the potential to... keep reading

I have written in the past about the problems with using prostate specific antigen (PSA) as a screening tool for prostate cancer. Virtually all men over age 40 know they should have a PSA blood test at their annual exam, yet few have a complete understanding of what it really says... keep reading

Jacques Cousteau defined a scientist as “… a curious man looking through the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.” Nature has many mysteries. One of them concerns a possible connection between a man’s height and his risk of dying from prostate cancer... keep reading

In recent years, there’s been a huge shift in understanding the difference between insignificant and significant prostate cancer (PCa). Over 15 years ago, Albertsen, et al. (2005) established that clinically insignificant PCa could be defined as cancer that “will not affect the patient during the natural course of his lifetime. The indolent course of localised keep reading