Tag: Prostate cancer

A new paper on PSA screening for prostate cancer (PCa) begins by pointing out that screening reduces PCa deaths; however, PSA followed by immediate biopsy increases cases of low-risk patients who have overly aggressive treatments that leave them with impaired urinary or sexual function—up to 12 years or more![i] The authors propose more refined screening keep reading

“What treatment do most patients choose?” Occasionally I’m asked this question, so I thought it would be interesting to present some statistics from published studies. 2011 data (low risk PCa) I’ll start with data presented in a 2011 article by a British team.[i] The authors collected records on 768 of their center’s patients with early keep reading

When you get out of bed in the morning, no one hands you a script for how your day will go. Most days, you can expect the day will proceed as planned, and it’s reasonable to believe you can meet surprise changes in routine without being thrown off balance. Sometimes, however, the surprise is unpleasant. keep reading

If Sherlock Holmes was a real person, would he be able to solve the mysterious case of chemical exposure and prostate cancer? Specifically, I’m talking about the chemicals used in products that kill bugs. Can you see where I’m going with this? If some chemicals are harmful to living cells in insects, might they also keep reading

In 2020, an editorial in a medical journal observed, “As the Internet is now an established platform and easily accessible, patients are increasingly seeking information from websites out of curiosity and for additional questions pertaining to their health condition.”[i] Well, sure. What could be more efficient than sitting in front of your home or office keep reading

Okay, folks, this is BIG NEWS! A research study out of the esteemed Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and two other academic centers may be the first of its kind to definitively connect healthy diet with reining in prostate cancer (PCa). Specifically, the study population was done with PCa patients currently on Active Surveillance keep reading

The use of 2 parameters of imaging sequences is called biparametric MRI (bpMRI) – and new research shows it could make MRI widely available as a better screening tool than the PSA test which can lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Now there’s an exciting boost to the speed and accuracy of bpMRI: Deep Learning (DL), a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI). keep reading

An essential part of planning treatment for prostate cancer (PCa) is determining its size and location. Where and how big is it? If the tumor is found early when it is small and contained within the gland, it is called localized. In this case, the patient is a candidate for a local treatment with curative keep reading

When a patient is told, “You have prostate cancer,” it’s not a simple one-size-fits-all diagnosis. The doctor will then give the patient an idea of how severe his cancer is. If his prostate cancer (PCa) is still localized (that is, contained within the gland), the doctor will specify if it is low, intermediate, or high keep reading

The strategy of using active surveillance (AS) is increasingly recommended to low-risk prostate cancer (PCa) patients as a way to avoid or delay overtreatment. This is a new way of thinking; before the New Millennium, PCa was assumed to be multi-focal and most men with more than 10 years of life expectancy were hurried into surgery or radiation. Today’s terminology includes words that might have been meaningless a decade ago, e.g. indolent cancer, very low risk disease, and focal disease are all consistent with the growing movement toward AS. keep reading