active surveillance Archives - Page 8 of 9

Agreeing on Active Surveillance Terminology

Medical language is filled with technical terms that are virtually incomprehensible for many patients because in many cases they have Latin or Greek roots. Even when doctors are speaking English, however, they aren’t all using the same terms for the same thing. Take, for example, the expression Active Surveillance (AS). AS is often understood by keep reading

Why Choose the Sperling Prostate Center for Active Surveillance?

With Active Surveillance on the rise, one would think that doctors who support AS for their prostate cancer patients have similar commitment and protocols. A new study (Sep. 2016) in the British Journal of Urology International (BJUI) spells out 8 areas of qualitative differences among AS doctors: physician comfort with active surveillance protocol selection beliefs keep reading

MRI Outperforms PHI for Patients Considering Active Surveillance

When it comes to Active Surveillance (AS) decisions, there’s good news and bad news. The good news: based on biopsy results, more doctors are recommending AS for prostate cancer (PCa) patients with insignificant disease. The bad news: the biopsy might have missed significant PCa so the patient can’t know for sure if AS is a keep reading

Uncertainty and Anxiety during Active Surveillance

The word is out: Patients with early stage, low risk prostate cancer have often been rushed into radical prostatectomy when many of them could have afforded to wait to seek treatment—possibly for years. Untold numbers of men were left with urinary and sexual problems that lasted for months, or were never fully resolved. For low keep reading

Active Surveillance and Testosterone Replacement Therapy

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. – Bertrand Russell What man over the age of, say, 45 doesn’t look back—perhaps nostalgically—on the lusty days of yore? Somewhere between the ages of eighteen to thirty, men reach a sexual peak in which desire keep reading

Does Money Buy Life?

Everyone knows that money doesn’t buy happiness. But can it buy life? A new study out of the University of Washington Medical Center suggests that prostate cancer patients in extreme financial distress are more likely to die than those who are not. This doesn’t mean that having money can buy life, but hardship is a keep reading

Multiparametric MRI Adds Value to Surveillance Monitoring

It’s always reassuring to receive affirmation, especially when offering a leading edge medical program to prostate cancer patients. Such was the case for us at the Sperling Prostate Center with the December, 2015 publication of a UCLA Medical Center study on the value-added of multiparametric MRI during Active Surveillance (AS). The authoritative Journal of Urology keep reading

The Right Way to do Active Surveillance

We know that the use of Active Surveillance (AS) as a way to hold off on prostate cancer (PCa) treatment is on the rise. Concerns about overtreatment, such as doing a prostatectomy on a patient who only has a small Gleason 3+3 tumor, stem from two recognized realities: Insignificant PCa may be slow-growing (indolent) and keep reading

Too Fat for Active Surveillance?

I have written on the importance of a healthy lifestyle, especially diet and nutrition, which is correlated with preventing prostate cancer (PCa) and other diseases. (NOTE: You can read some of my related blogs from links at the end of this one.) I came across a new multi-center Italian study that addresses the question: does keep reading

What Happens When Prostate Biopsies Are Negative?

The annual American Urological Society meeting (AUA 2015, May 15-19) has more presentations than ever on multiparametric MRI detection of prostate cancer, MRI targeted biopsies, MRI/ultrasound fusion, and MRI-guided focal therapies. The urologic world is sitting up and taking notice as advanced imaging is changing the prostate cancer landscape. I will be sharing selected presentations keep reading

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