Information and Resources
If you experience a frequent urge to urinate—perhaps due to having an enlarged prostate if you’re a man, having given birth if you’re a woman, or having an “overactive bladder”—there may be a practical do-it-yourself solution to the problem, referred to as bladder training. It’s worth a try before resorting to medication or surgical procedures.
Read more at berkeleywellness.com HERE
Stereotactic body radiation therapy or SBRT (sometimes referred to as Cyberknife or SHARP) has had excellent 7-year outcomes in an update of the consortium study, including data from 10 single-institution trials and two multi-institutional trials. Get the details HERE.
Men who are initially diagnosed with intermediate-risk prostate cancer may or may not be good candidates for Active Surveillance. This excellent article begins to provide a basis for making that determination. You can read the article by clicking HERE.
Moderately hypofractionated IMRT (radiation therapy delivered in 20 to 26 treatments instead of the conventional 40-44 treatments) has received strong endorsement from all of the major US organizations of physicians who treat prostate cancer. Read more about this significant new guideline here.
Scientists at Cedars-Sinai have discovered how prostate cancer can sometimes withstand and outwit a standard hormone therapy, causing the cancer to spread. Their findings also point to a simple blood test that may help doctors predict when this type of hormone therapy resistance will occur. Learn more about these interesting findings by clicking HERE.
So you’ve had your PSA test, and it came back high. Your doctor did a DRE and ran a few more tests, and assures you that prostate cancer is very unlikely. Still, you’re worried. What are some other causes of a high PSA?
Read about this in the Prostate Care Foundation blog HERE
The following presentation slides have some useful information with pros and cons of HDR and LDR Brachytherapy by Daniel Fernandez, MD, PhD. – Moffitt Cancer Center.
View or download the slides from HERE
Reported in Urology Times:
For urologists and radiation oncologists alike, when treating prostate cancer, one recurring theme is “protect the rectum.” As surgeons, we learn meticulous techniques to avoid rectal injuries, and our radiation colleagues have long strategized on how to optimally deliver the maximum dose of tolerable radiation while minimizing radiation exposure to “organs at risk” such as the bladder, rectum, urethra, and penile bulb. In this era of dose escalation and hypofractionation, rectal toxicity is of paramount consideration.
In this article, we discuss one particular new product and how it may herald a significant change in the landscape of radiation therapy for prostate cancer.
Read the entire article on urologytimes.com HERE
Enzalutamide (XTANDI) is a prescription medicine used to treat men with prostate cancer that no longer responds to a medical or surgical treatment that lowers testosterone. XTANDI is now approved to treat men with prostate cancer that no longer responds to treatment that lowers testosterone and has not spread to other parts of the body. This is also known as non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).
This web page, published by the National Cancer Institute, lists the clinical trials using Enzalutamide. Click here to view the article.
Once a man is castrate resistant and moves on a second line hormone therapy drug like Zytiga or Xtandi (aka AR inhibitors) it is inevitable that the Zytiga or Xtandi will also become ineffective.
When this happens, the question that comes is what should be the next treatment? Generally, the options currently available are either to move to the drug not initially used ( Zytiga if Xtandi was first used or Xtandi if Zytiga was used) or instead to use taxane chemotherapy (Taxotere aka docetaxel).
Knowing which of these two options is best has been nothing but guesswork. But, things are improving. There is an investigational test that detects the expression of a protein called AR-V7 in the nuclei of circulating tumor cells taken from a vial of blood cells (liquid biopsy). This test can help guide this decision.
A recent study (published in JAMA Oncology) evaluating this test has shown that a blood test can detect the protein called AR-V7 in circulating tumor cells and that the presence of this protein accurately predicts how well certain men will respond to AR inhibitors (Zytiga and Xtandi).
Read the complete blog on CancerABCs.org HERE