Ask the Prostate Cancer Expert: How Is Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Evolving?

How Has the Onset of Prostate Cancer Evolved?

How Has the Onset of Prostate Cancer Evolved? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Prostate cancer diagnostic testing has evolved over time. Watch as expert Dr. Yaw Nyame from the University of Washington shares insight about how prostate cancer diagnostic tests – and, in turn, treatment versus active monitoring are used for patient care.

See More From Best Prostate Cancer Care No Matter Where You Live


Related Resources:

Ask the Prostate Cancer Expert: How Is Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Evolving?


Transcript:

Sherea Cary: 

Dr. Nyame, how has prostate cancer evolved over the last decade regarding the onset of the disease, the population in which it impacts the care and the treatment? 

Dr. Nyame: 

You know, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men that is in a solid organ. It affects about one in nine men over their lifetime, and probably the biggest advance or change we’ve seen in the disease occurred in the late ‘80s with the introduction of the PSA test. What that allows us to do is detect cancers very early in their natural life history, if you will, and that gives us the opportunity really to provide treatment when there’s…with an opportunity for cure. The downside to that is not all prostate cancers are the same, we know that some prostate cancers are diseases that men will die with and not from…meaning that some of these cancers that we detect don’t need any treatment or intervention. This means that a lot of research that has occurred in the last decade or two has been focused on helping us determine which cancers deserve treatment and which ones we can watch safely and so some of the biggest advances have been diagnostic tests such as radiology imaging, so we’ve seen things like MRI really come into the mainstay of prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment up front. We have very exciting nuclear medicine scans. 

So, you might hear the term PSM-A as a new test that’s really going to disrupt and change the way the prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment is made. We also have genetic testing that we can do on blood samples, urine samples, and tissue, that might give us some very exciting information about one’s risk of dying from prostate cancer, which ultimately is what we want to know when we’re offering treatment to someone.