← Return to Half of Prostate Cancer Focal Therapy Cases Were Inappropriate

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Profile picture for bjroc @bjroc

Seems as long as it is confined to the prostate and they can reach it, and it needs treatment, so called focal therapy (which can be up to 90%+ of prostate) are the BEST option. All that overgrading and super push to over-treat is out there, I am sure 3/4 of the pathology I had are plain wrong and were over graded. I am sure 3/4 of the recommendations for treatments I had were over-treatment. Seems the field is geared around that, and up to patient to catch it and only do what is needed. But to go after focal is not the place to start. Most places in the country may have teams that treat PCa but they have zero focal treatment available in hundreds of miles so they feel over-treatment is justified and never mention anything but overtreatment. The one doctor in my area who supposedly does focal treatments was only doing it in very rare cases and he routinely goes for over treatment recomendations because he makes more money that way. The place to start is not going after focal places, every day practices never mention anything but over-treatment prostatectomies or radiation with ADT, based on over-grading and making money. Plus pathology is real bad in my opinion, almost all out there is over-grading to cover in case of legal action, maybe these are better targets to go after.

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Replies to "Seems as long as it is confined to the prostate and they can reach it, and..."

@bjroc
I encounter many prostate patient’s in essence just scared of Surgery or Radiation even though it’s most appropriate and read about all the new focal treatments that don’t carry the side effects and are under study in clinical trials and considered investigational and the patients want those and many are getting them and only delaying what they actually needed radiation or surgery. Then when doctors are recommending surgery or radiation they say they are pushing more expensive treatments. They are not pushing, and in many cases the patients are pushing doctors for alternatives to surgery or radiation and they may be cheaper, but it had nothing to do with the cost in their recommendation. If the medical community was all about pushing the expensive treatments they would have never come up with Active Surveillance which eliminated thousands and thousands of radiation and surgery for gleason 6.