Biden will be here soon: Former President metastatic prostate cancer

Biden will be here soon too!

Correct, the news media is outta touch. You and Jeffmarc could prove them wrong in. A Heartbeat. Why do they put out such obsolete garbage? Crazies out there all over these days, even the Urologists they interviewed on TV= space cadets!!!

Change and innovation don't happen everywhere all at once. Everett Rogers wrote a famous book on how innovations spread among agricultural professionals, and it since became required reading in many other fields.

Note that slow adoption of innovations isn't always a bad thing. For example, when the authorities recommended stopping routine PSA screening in 2012, many doctors didn't listen and kept doing it anyway, and many people here in the forum benefited from the earlier detection — that's a case where the late majority/laggards were right. But it is unfortunate that so many new, proven treatments for prostate cancer still aren't familiar to practitioners in smaller centres and hospitals yet.

(Personally, I want my treatments to be right on the line between Early Adopters and Early Majority on the Rogers curve; to the left of that, the risks of unproven treatments outweigh the potential benefits; to the right of that, I'd be missing out on treatments that would have a strong probability of helping me.)

What I’d like to know is how do they know so quickly that “… the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.” What test(s) do they have that let them know within a day or two of diagnosis that his prostate cancer is hormone-sensitive?

Using logic over protocol is my motto. Agree with all you said.

Yes, I was also wondering about it. Does this mean he had prostate cancer before, and this is reoccurrence with metastasis?

No, but if they put him on ADT a couple of months ago and were seeing a decline in PSA, they'd know now. And he might just have had his scan that identified metastatic cancer.

In any case, let's not second-guess our fellow prostate cancer patients.

Actually, many do, which is precisely why we see so many advanced cases today. If your doctor didn't follow those guidelines, you were one of the lucky ones.

In the early 2000s, many men were getting routine PSA tests. Unfortunately, so many men panicked when they heard that “you have prostate cancer,” and jumped quickly to getting a prostatectomy when it wasn’t medically necessary (for low-grade, localized disease). (Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.)

As a result, the USPSTF recommended against routine prostate cancer screening (assigning the screening a “D” recommendation: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/prostate-cancer-screening-2012).

You are correct - at that point many doctors stopped recommending, and many insurance companies stopped covering, routine PSA tests. (I started having annual PSA tests in 2000; my doctors never stopped.)

A few years later (in 2018) they revised that 2012 recommendation —> But, the current USPSTF guidelines still recommend against PSA screening after age 70 (https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/prostate-cancer-screening).

Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. It will take a few more years for the impact of that 2012 USPSTF decision to work itself out of the system.

The timeline of the events was that on Friday (16 May), “….he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,”

(So, we know that very recently he had a biopsy, maybe (or maybe not) an MRI, and either a bone scan or a PSMA PET scan to detect the bone metastasis.)

Other reports indicated that he went to be treated for urinary issues, and during a DRE a small nodule was found in the prostate, which necessitated further evaluation….” (No mention of a PSA test.)

Note that privacy still matters, even for a public official. (It was for me when I was an elected official.) The public has no inherent right to know. So, we won’t know all the details.

It’s always important to put together a timeline of events so that we (and others) can benefit from others’ experiences, what is standard of care and what might not be.

Reports also indicate that “Biden did not undergo prostate cancer screening during his last medical checkup while in office, in February 2024, according to records released at the time. Experts say this is likely due to that fact that these screenings are not routinely recommended for men 70 years or older.”

It’s also known that in 2019, Biden was diagnosed with BPH. One wonders if he had a PSA done then?

Everyone’s situation can be a lesson-learned for others, and have nothing to do with second-guessing. Just the facts….