Category: Prostate Cancer

  • 5 basic questions to ask your robotic surgeon

    Robotic Prostate Surgery – What Men Need To Know I came across this article on the web and can answer this for my practice: “If you are considering robotic prostate surgery over traditional open surgery, you should make the following questions part of your doctor-screening process: * How long have you been performing prostate surgery…

  • I was worried I was the first to perform a radical prostatectomy on an 80 year old man

    Men older than 80 years can undergo successful prostatectomy – UrologyTimes Radical prostatectomy can be a reasonable option for select octogenarian patients, according to researchers from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. I saw back my oldest robotic prostate patient today. He is 80 years old and had surgery 3 months ago. He looked great and…

  • Survival advantage with surgery for elderly patients with prostate cancer?

    JAMA — Survival Associated With Treatment vs Observation of Localized Prostate Cancer in Elderly Men, December 13, 2006, Wong et al. 296 (22): 2683 Conclusions This study suggests a survival advantage is associated with active treatment for low- and intermediate-risk prostate cancer in elderly men aged 65 to 80 years. Because observational data cannot completely…

  • Improvement in positive margins with robotic surgery

    Robotic Prostatectomy can reduce positive margins Source- Surgery News p. 13 This was an abstract presented at SLS meeting in Boston in September. The 2 urologists showed a dramatic improvement in positive margins from their last 100 prostatectomies done open to the first 93 done robotically. The organ confined changes for each surgeon were 37%…

  • Surgeon influence on prostate cancer outcomes

    UroToday – Prostate Cancer Surgery Outcomes: Surgeon Dependent Factors “Subgroup analysis showed superior recurrence free survival for patients treated by surgeons with greater than 1,000 operations compared to less than 50 operations. After 250 surgeries, the curves plateau.” This was a presentation by one of the worlds best prostate cancer surgeons, Dr. Peter Scardino. Pertinent…

  • Watchful waiting vs. definitive therapy

    UroToday – What is the Best Approach for Screen-Detected Low Volume Cancers? What is the Best Approach for Screen-Detected Low Volume Cancers? BETHESDA, MD (SUO 7th Annual Meeting – December 1-2, 2006:NIH) – In a session moderated by Dr. Eric Klein, Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Laurence Klotz, University of Toronto presented the “The Case for Observation”.…

  • Higher cholesterol may lead to more aggressive prostate cancer

    Prostate Cancer Treatment and Symptoms > Prostate Cancer and Association With Plasma Cholesterol: “Prostate cancer patients who had lower levels of cholesterol in their blood had a significantly reduced chance of developing more aggressive forms of the disease, compared to patients with higher cholesterol readings. These findings may help explain the earlier discovery, reported by…

  • Obesity and prostate cancer

    UroToday – Obesity, Diabetes, and Risk of Prostate Cancer: Results from the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial: “These unique data obtained from a prospective randomized trial suggest that obesity may preferentially increase the risk of high-grade prostate cancer, while decreasing the risk of developing low-grade tumors. The authors suggest that this may explain why no association…

  • Prostate cancer- How does one decide on therapy?

    A colleague of mine asked on a blog comment: “Do patients need to make there own decisions or should the urologist guide them to the best decision?” That’s a great question and every urologist, medical oncologist, and radiation doc would have his/her own opinion.