Scientific American issue - April 16th issue prostate cancer

Thank you so much for sharing that. Here's what the article says about stage 4b prostate cancer:

"For patients whose cancers are advanced at initial diagnosis or progress and become metastatic, the treatment of oligometastases now often leads to long-term remission and requires fewer treatments with harmful systemic side effects. For those with more widespread metastatic disease, their cancer can now be managed with improved therapeutics based on a better understanding of disease biology. These new strategies have begun to transform this once rapidly fatal disease into a chronic condition that people can live with for years or even for their full life expectancy."

Great article. Reading it almost is a form of a test, where I felt relieved and confident that 100% of what I read was already known and understood. It is amazing how much progress has been made in the past 10 years.

My only nit-pick of the information and is more so related to English grammar, is the paragraph where docetaxel/chemotherapy is introduced. It is grammatically correct, but it almost (not quite) gives a sense that these drugs are part of a family of drugs that block production of ... which isn't the case.

Will have to read it.

Very good read, thanks for sharing. I also found the article below very encouraging as I am stage 4 and just getting ready to start treatment. This disease doesn't mean a death sentence.
https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2024/01/22-years-with-metastatic-prostate-cancer.html#:~:text=Drew%20Bouton%20was%2045%20when,it%20probably%20wasn%27t%20cancer.

Great article!

Here’s a direct link:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/treating-prostate-cancer-at-any-stage/
Interestingly, the same author, Marc B. Garnick, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, wrote a Scientific American article 12 years ago entitled: “ The Great Prostate Debate: Does Screening Save Lives?”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-great-prostate-debate/

Interesting articles!!

His 2012 paper leads with the similar mis-statement that is still often quoted today - “… needlessly exposing hundreds of thousands of men who were tested and found to have prostate cancer to such common complications as impotence and urinary incontinence (from surgical removal of the prostate) and rectal bleeding (from radiation treatment).”

As is always the case, it’s not the (PSA) information that caused the impotence, urinary incontinence, or rectal bleeding. It’s the making of bad treatment decisions with that information that led to those awful outcomes.

Can you imagine if I had an elevated cholesterol level, would they take me immediately to surgery to put in stents or give me a heart transplant. Of course not (even though most everyone who eventually had stents or a heart transplant at some point might have had high cholesterol).

If I have a 100F temperature, they don’t treat me the same as someone with a 105F temperature (even though everyone with a 105F temperature probably had a 100F temperature at some point).

What is lacking with PSA testing are common sense rules and decisions that need to accompany PSA testing, as to what follows.

This is an easy problem to fix. But, the knee-jerk reaction is to just throw it all out.

It’s necessary that these type of articles stimulate conversations (and hopefully, thoughtful solutions).

I agree. We are serving neither group by being binary about how we approach diagnosis. Here is a great talk by Peter Atilla and Ted Schaeffer (Northwestern) about, mostly, the best approach to diagnosis. I have PCa and want, of course, that my sons avoid this.

Mike72, Thank you for this Scientific American article. Epically hopeful.

I was impressed with todays recent advancements against Pc.

Replying to bump this thread, so that new forum members will see it.