Hartford HealthCare
September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month
Could a new long-term study could change the treatment of prostate cancer moving forward?
Dr. Stuart Kesler is a urologist with the Tallwood Urology and Kidney Institute – and he has the basics on this slow-growing cancer and the new study!
turning now to medical rounds could the results of a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine affect the future management of prostate cancer well that's one of the questions we're tackling tonight in medical rounds and joining us live is dr. Stuart Kessler a urologist at the tall wood urology and kid the Institute it's nice to see you again dr. Kessler nice to be here thank you well September as you know is prostate cancer awareness month so let's begin with this question what are the signs and symptoms of prostate cancer well thankfully most patients don't have any signs or symptoms of prostate cancer if it's a late diagnosis or late late onset in the disease some patients can develop bone pain some patients can have urinary symptoms such as slowing of their stream or even difficulty yearning but thankfully the majority of patients especially early on do not have any symptoms now that brings me to the PSA test the question about that and how that becomes so vital there's so much conflicting information though about it its controversial there's so many different opinions about the test why is that well I think the PSA tests to some extent is a little misunderstood and also has limitations so first of all if you have an elevated PSA test some patients equate that to a diagnosis of prostate cancer which is not correct there are a number of different things that can cause your PSA to be elevated also if you are diagnosed with prostate cancer unfortunately with a PSA blood test sometimes we overdiagnosed lower risk disease and so we also have to have a conversation with patients sometimes that lower risk disease that may be diagnosed doesn't always necessarily mean necessarily mean that you have to undergo treatment and that's the key question next is let's talk about the study that found prostate cancer survival rates are equally high the survival rates are equally high if you monitor the disease versus undergoing surgery so what are doctors and patients to think now going forward what do they do so the study that you reference it was just published a few days ago and so first of all in general in medicine we try not to make decisions based upon one study alone but a whole confluence of studies and this is a very important study nonetheless and so this is a study out of England where they took 17 hundred patients who are diagnosed with prostate cancer based upon a PSA and they randomized them to three different treatment arms one arm was surgery one arm was radiation and one treatment arm was active surveillance and they followed them for an average of ten years which is very important because for prostate cancer being slow growing in general you need a long follow-up to make some determinations and what they found was the risk of dying from prostate cancer among those three treatment arms was similar they also did find however that in patients who underwent active surveillance they had a two times higher risk of progression of disease and risk of metastasis so it is possible and time will tell that if those patients get followed longer because of those higher rates perhaps they may over time have higher rates of death rates so it sounds like we need more study on this but it's probably a good conversation to have with your doctor we thank you so much dr. Kessler for sharing this great information tonight
#September #Prostate #Cancer #Awareness #Month
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