Tag Archive for: stage IV prostate cancer

How Does Prostate Cancer Progress? Understanding the Stages of Prostate Cancer

How Does Prostate Cancer Progress? Understanding the Stages of Prostate Cancer from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

What do prostate cancer patients need to know about progression and recurrence? Expert Dr. Xin Gao discusses the difference between progression and recurrence and explains what occurs in the body in different stages of prostate cancer.

Dr. Xin Gao is a Medical Oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Learn more about this expert Dr. Gao.

See More From INSIST! Prostate Cancer

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What Are Current Prostate Cancer Treatment Options?

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What Key Factors Impact Prostate Cancer Treatment Decisions?


Transcript:

Katherine:

Dr. Gao, this program is focusing on advanced prostate cancer. Would you walk us through how the disease progresses in each stage?  

Dr. Gao:

Sure. I think advanced prostate cancer can mean a lot of different things, but in general, it means a prostate cancer that has either spread out from the prostate gland itself to other areas of the body or has recurred despite either surgery or radiation-based therapy to the primary prostate tumor. 

In each of these situations, typically the focus would on medication types of treatments and we think about advanced prostate cancer as either hormone-sensitive or hormone-resistant, or the other term in the field for it would be castration-resistant, meaning that the prostate cancer is either sensitive to hormonal therapies or perhaps it’s no longer sensitive to the most common type of hormone therapy called androgen deprivation therapy. So, those are sort of the ways that the cancer can progress, and typically all these cancers start as hormone-sensitive prostate cancers and over time, they may evolve and become resistant and become what we call castration-resistant prostate cancer. 

Katherine:

Okay. So, they’re not numbered as in a lot of other cancers, like stage I, stage II?  

Dr. Gao:

Meaning by stage, oh. So, there are stages. All advanced prostate cancers are by definition stage IV. All advanced cancers, in general, are stage IV but advanced prostate cancer would be stage IV. Most prostate cancers actually present as localized prostate cancer, stage I, stage II, even stage III prostate cancers and the majority of localized prostate cancers are actually, fortunately, quite curable with either surgery or radiation-based therapies.  

Unfortunately, not all are curable, and some will recur despite these curative intent treatments, and others might just be inherently more aggressive biologically, and they could even present with metastatic disease or stage IV disease having spread to other sites outside of the prostate gland, even at diagnosis. 

When prostate cancer metastasizes or spreads, it commonly spreads by lymphatic vessels or by the bloodstream and most commonly, they tend to go to either lymph nodes or bones or some combination of both. More common areas of lymph node spread are in the pelvic areas, kind of near where the prostate gland is, or deep in the abdomen in an area called the retroperitoneum. And then bones more commonly could be in sort of the back or spine bones or in the pelvic bones, but it could go to other areas less common as well. 

An Overview of Prostate Cancer Treatment Approaches

An Overview of Prostate Cancer Treatment Approaches from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How is prostate cancer currently treated? Dr. Andrew Armstrong provides an overview of treatment options for prostate cancer patients across various stages of the disease.

Dr. Andrew J. Armstrong is a medical oncologist and director of clinical research at the Duke Cancer Institute’s Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers. For more information on Dr. Armstrong here.

See More from Engage Prostate Cancer

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An Expert’s Perspective on Emerging Prostate Cancer Research


Transcript:

Katherine:

What are the treatment options that are currently available for prostate cancer patients? 

Dr. Armstrong:

It’s a really important question, and I would say it depends. In early disease, when cancer is picked up early, many patients are cured. Prostate cancer is the number one survived cancer in the United States. It’s important to realize that and kind of take a deep breath and realize that most patients beat prostate cancer. Only about one out of six men will suffer a relapse or develop metastatic disease or Stage IV disease that requires more of a lifelong journey of therapy. 

So, most men come into this because they’ve been screened by their primary care doctor. They had a high PSA, they underwent a biopsy, they were found to have cancer.  

And the first decision, particularly for example at our Duke multidisciplinary clinic, the first decision that we always share with the patient, and as part of shared decision-making, is we give information about prognosis and risk using the PSA level, the biopsy information, staging information if imaging is done.  

And then giving a category or a risk group to that patient can help them decide what are the options that are nationally recommended, internationally recommended by evidence-based guidelines. The most important decision is whether that prostate cancer needs treatment right now at all, and the initial observation or active surveillance is a very valuable “first do no harm” approach for men with very low risk or low risk types of prostate cancer. With a low-grade cancer, low PSA, low stage, and that’s about a third of all patients.  

That’s a huge number of men are told they have cancer, but they actually don’t need initial treatment. 

And they need to be explained to, why we’re not going to treat that cancer, why it’s so safe, and why mortality is not high in that patient population when we don’t treat it, and how we do active surveillance. For example, imaging with MRI, repeat biopsies. And a lot of patients do appreciate that because they’re not undergoing surgery or radiation and they’re not being harmed by those treatments. That would be called overtreatment. That’s not for everybody, though. 

So, just like prostate cancer comes in different flavors, treatments come in different flavors. So, there’s things where the Gleason score is higher, the stage may be higher, the PSA is higher, and the risk to the patient is higher. And when we get into that more intermediate- and high-risk situation, treatment is going to be necessary. But then we’ll have a menu of treatment options that is important to talk through. Typically surgery, radiation, sometimes alternatives to that. 

Sometimes combinations with hormonal therapy, which we call systemic therapy. The drugs that work throughout the body. 

Katherine Banwell:

What about for patients who have advanced disease? 

Dr. Armstrong:

The word “advanced” can mean different things to different people. Advanced can mean metastatic disease. It can mean disease that’s not curable. But advanced can also mean that it’s high risk. That the disease is still confined to the prostate, but it’s aggressive, and that if it’s not handled quickly with a multidisciplinary approach, for example, it has a high risk of occurrence.  

So, advanced disease can mean aggressive, in need of treatment. Sometimes it can be cured if it’s confined to the prostate. Sometimes it requires more than just one treatment modality, such as surgery followed by radiation, or radiation plus some of the newer hormonal therapies.  

For men with stage IV disease, that means disease that has left the prostate and gone to distant sites, we have very effective therapies that can still control this type of advanced disease for many, many years, so it is important to realize how far we’ve come with all of our therapies and to reassure the patient and their family about the good prognosis, even in the worst-case scenario, for many patients. 

How to Locate Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials and Improve Awareness

How to Locate Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials and Improve Awareness from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

 How is prostate cancer impact different for some populations? Watch as experts Dr. Yaw Nyame and Sherea Cary share the benefits of clinical trials, reliable clinical trial resources, and how clinical trial participation rates can be improved for better care.

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Transcript:

Sherea Cary: 

What advice do you have for prostate cancer patients about locating a clinical trial? Where can you find one? 

Dr. Nyame: 

Clinical trials tend to happen at the big cancer centers and the big academic university centers, although many of those programs will have affiliate partners out in the community. The easiest way to learn about clinical trials is to start by asking the physician that’s treating you for your prostate cancer, oftentimes, they’ll have resources and connections to the trials directly or are the people who are administering them. However, other great sources are going to be patient advocacy networks, and there are many of them for prostate cancer, there’s one…there are several. I’ll start naming a few. They have the Prostate Cancer Foundation, you have Us TOO, you have Zero Cancer, you have a PHEN, Prostate Health Education Network, which is an advocacy group for Black men with prostate cancer. So, these are all great sources of finding out what clinical trials exist, and in addition, you can just get on the Internet and Google if that’s something you have access to. The trick is navigating all the information, and I think knowing what trials are available for you, whether you qualify, that kind of thing can be difficult, and that’s ultimately where finding a provider, whether it’s your direct urologists or radiation oncologist or whoever is helping treat your prostate cancer, either them directly or sometimes seeking a second opinion, and going to a place where you might find someone who has some expertise in trials, if that’s something that you’re interested in. 

Sherea Cary: 

My father participated in a clinical trial, it was going on, I think the time of his treatment, and it was offered to us, and he was at a big facility here in Houston that offered…ask him if he wanted to participate. We did a lot of research. We said we’d try it. And we were glad to be able to participate. I participated in clinical trials also for different health conditions, because I believe it’s important that we have to participate in order for our people to gather the information that’s necessary. So, thank you for that. 

Dr. Nyame: 

Absolutely, you know I think there are a lot of reasons that we think that our Black community, for instance, may not participate in a clinical trial given the history of medical experimentation and various forms of abuse that have existed in our history. But what I recently heard from our partner of our community partners at PHEN, when they surveyed Black men about prostate cancer clinical trials, was that although there was some concern about trust in the history, that the overwhelming majority of the men wanted to participate, but they never were asked. And that’s really stuck with me, and I think that Black men are under-represented in clinical trials, and we have to find ways to be more inclusive and understand what barriers might exist into participation so that we can have that data to care better for the population. 

How Does Aggressive Prostate Cancer Impact Various Populations?

How Does Aggressive Prostate Cancer Impact Various Populations? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How is prostate cancer impact different for some populations? Watch as expert Dr. Yaw Nyame shares how prostate cancer incidence and death rates vary for some groups, potential risk factors, screening recommendations, and actions that can be taken to improve health outcomes.

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Transcript:

Sherea Cary: 

What differences do you see in terms of aggressiveness for cancers in different…various populations? 

Dr. Nyame: 

This is an area of research that for me, is trying to understand why certain populations have more aggressive or worse outcomes when it comes to prostate cancer. 

The most obvious example of this here in the United States is for Black men. Black men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, so about 70 percent more likely to be diagnosed, and they are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer as men of other races in the United States. If you look at what the natural history of prostate cancer and Black men looks like, meaning if you were to chart from diagnosis through the course of the disease, does it look different for Black men? The answer is yes, it appears of Black men get prostate cancer when they’re younger, and there’s data to suggest that perhaps Black men get more aggressive prostate cancer because they’re more likely to progress from the localized or treatable disease to stage IV aggressive disease that can’t be treated. We don’t understand what the drivers of that are for a long time, the medical community has suggested that it’s all biology, and by that may be an inherited biology, but we know that health disparities really carry a significant social contribution. And, in fact, I like to say that social and environmental factors inform biology too. And so, if we see something biologic that explains these trends, it doesn’t mean that that’s the way they were born, it might mean that you put someone in a community that lives near a highway with high pollution or does not have access to clean water or lives in a state of high stress or over security. We don’t know what the biologic manifestations of those types of experiences are, but that perhaps is the reason why we see our communities of color, especially our Black men, are experiencing a higher burden of prostate cancer. 

Sherea Cary: 

So, is there a push to have African American men tested earlier with the PSA test, since it appears that they may get prostate cancer earlier?  

Dr. Nyame: 

The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, which makes a recommendation to the medical community about prostate cancer screening states that they cannot make a specific recommendation about screening in Black men and other high-risk populations like men with a strong family history of prostate cancer, because those men were not included in the clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of PSA testing for screening. 

Unfortunately, Black men make up 3 percent or less of participants in the two screening trials that have informed whether there’s a benefit to PSA testing, which there has been shown to be a 20 percent decrease in dying from prostate cancer if you get screened. We recently took data from the screening trials and superimposed them on real-world data from our surveillance apparatus for cancer in the United States, and what we found was that if you did lower the age of screening in Black men from age 55 to 45, that you did decrease the risk of dying from prostate cancer significantly. It is our hope that this type of research will encourage the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force and other medical societies to reconsider their screening recommendation for Black men, ultimately, whatever, if there is a recommendation made to screen at younger ages, I think we need to be conscientious and evaluate what the impact is on the ground, so that if there is a time where we need to reverse a recommendation like that because it’s potentially harmful, that we consider that. But I feel strongly sitting here today that we do need to advocate for earlier screening and Black men. 

Why Is Prostate Cancer Often Referred to As a Couples’ Disease?

Why Is Prostate Cancer Often Referred to As a Couples’ Disease? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Prostate cancer is often referred to as a disease of couples, but why is that? Watch as expert Dr. Yaw Nyame shares the impact of social support on prostate cancer outcomes and ways that family and friends can help with prostate cancer care.

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Transcript:

Sherea Cary: 

So, some people may consider prostate cancer a couples’ disease. What advice would you give to a care partner? My father was a prostate cancer survivor, my mother was very supportive of him, but I took much of the lead as far as being his caregiver and coordinating things between my father, his doctors’ appointments, and with my siblings. 

Do you believe that support people, caregivers, such as children, are able to also assist in receiving care? 

Dr. Nyame: 

Absolutely. The data is overwhelming in this scenario, patients who are partnered or have strong social support do better, and I always say that the patients who have the best outcomes when it comes to cancer, have someone like you, Sherea in their life. It’s not surprising, given the burden of cancer treatment, that having someone that can help navigate all the aspects of your care and be there to support you leads to better outcomes and better satisfaction with the treatments that you choose. A cancer diagnosis, especially prostate cancer diagnosis, a disease that has a very high cure rate, has a very long-life span, but has really life-altering potential consequences of the treatments you received, has an impact on what we return for survivorship. So how do you live with your cancer, and so the individuals that are there to support you through that journey are absolutely critical.  

How Can a Multi-Disciplinary Team Benefit Prostate Cancer Patients?

How Can a Multi-Disciplinary Team Benefit Prostate Cancer Patients? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

 A prostate cancer multi-disciplinary team can benefit patient care. Watch as expert Dr. Yaw Nyameexplains the typical steps taken through prostate cancer care and how the team members can vary for localized prostate cancer versus advanced prostate cancer. 

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Transcript:

Sherea Cary: 

What does a multi-discipline approach to prostate cancer look like?  

Dr. Nyame: 

Well, when you think about prostate cancer and how it’s diagnosed and how it’s treated, you’re talking about a process that involves a team, the process often starts with your primary care physician, he or she may order a PSA test, which will prompt a biopsy if it’s positive. So that’s the step one is that relationship you have with your primary care physician. Step two is going to be your urologist, that’s the person that’s going to do your biopsy, and if you are diagnosed with prostate cancer that person in conjunction with your primary care physician is then going to be leading this process of do we actively watch your cancer because it’s a low risk, or do we seek treatment because it’s localized, meaning it’s in the prostate and we can still get your treatment with curative intent as we call it, or has it spread? And in that case, your options for a doctor are different on the watch side, you’re probably looking at a urologist who’s watching closely, on the localized side, you’re going to talk to maybe a radiation specialist or a urologist, because both treatments are equal and their effectiveness from cancer treatment.  

But they have different side effects. And I think to get good information about what treatment is best for you, you should see both, and then on the advanced side, you’re talking about a medical oncologist that’s going to help navigate all of the various treatments that we have now for stage IV prostate cancer, and even in that setting, you might still find yourself considering a clinical trial with someone like a urologist or getting radiation treatment, which can be standard of care in select patients that have stage IV cancer. So, as you can see, it is a very wide range of individuals that are helping take care of your cancer, and that’s just on the treatment side, that’s not talking about any of the other supportive services that you may need that may exist either in your community or in your health systems where you’re getting treated. And those can include patient navigators, social workers, the various nursing services, nutritionists, there are a lot of people that you may want to put on your team as you’re considering your care.  

Advanced Prostate Cancer: David’s Clinical Trial Profile

Advanced Prostate Cancer: David’s Clinical Trial Profile from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Prostate cancer patient David received a diagnosis at stage IV during a routine PSA check. Watch as he shares his prostate cancer journey, his experience with clinical trials and treatments, and his advice to other patients about lessons learned about prostate cancer side effects and the impacts of clinical trials.

See More From Patient-to-Patient Diverse Prostate Cancer Clinical Trial Profiles

Transcript:

David: 

Hello, my name’s David. I am 58 years-old.I was diagnosed in 2016 with prostate cancer, I had no actual signs or symptoms of prostate cancer, it was only found due to Army doctors, I had something wrong with me, which had nothing to do with the cancer. They did a PSA check, and my PSA came back at 1050, where it should be around 0. From that I then got sent to a local hospital where I had tests, I had biopsies to open my prostate, which found out I had stage IV prostate cancer. 

From there I got asked would I like to go to the Christie County Hospital in Manchester, UK. From there, they offered me the trial called the STAMPEDE trial. This trial was used in different procedures, which is already around, we use them together to try and extend people with prostate’s life. I got to turn the arm where it was also attached with chemotherapy, followed by 20 sessions of radiotherapy. This happened over three, four months, which after that brought my PSA down, but only to round 20 odd. From this after a couple of months, my PSA started to rise fairly quickly. I then got put onto the drug called bicalutamide (Casodex). This lasted a couple of months, because my cancer is so aggressive, it started to grow. I then got put onto another chemotherapy, cabazitaxel (Jevtana). After my first session of the cabazitaxel, I then got a CT scan and from this we found out the growths were still growing. 

So after this, I then got put on a drug called abiraterone with [inaudible] which is a stand-only. I was on this for 22 months, which was very good, it brought my PSA down to eight, which is as low as it’s ever been. Like I say, it lasted 22 months, but then the cancer started to come back quite a bit, so my oncologist actually said there’s no actual normal treatment left for me, and asked would I like to go on to trials, clinical, a first stage clinical trial, right away I said yes. My first clinical trial was a Carrick called Carrick, this lasted six months, but again, the cancer started to grow again, so I came off of this. I then have four weeks, no trials at all. It’s what called a clean-out where you can’t have any drugs at all in between trials. I then went on to what was called task 368-1, this lasted longer which lasted seven months. That again, the cancer starts to grow again. So, then I got on this one called CellCentric For the the CellCentric trail, they put you back on to abiraterone, which normally you don’t, wouldn’t take past one to two months… for me, it’s carried on working again. It’s now on seven months of working until it stops working, I can’t go on the new drug called CellCentric. 

For me, this is cool because it’s still working, the old drug, and it’s a very…let’s say there’s not a lot of side effects except for what steroids [inaudible]. So at the moment, we’re just seeing how it goes. I have scans every eight weeks, a CT scan and a full body scan from each time they come back, they then decide what’s happening next…and that is my journey up to now, which is five-and-a-half years later. 

With the clinical trials, I feel really good at the moment, because as I said, the trial [inaudible] and abiraterone (Zytiga) is not a drug that causes a lot of side effects. Through other trials have been, they are very intense, and that’s what they always warn people, which are overnight stays when you first take the drugs, so they are very tiring, you have to have blood done overnight all the way through the night, you get BCGs to make sure your body is not reacting to the drugs, and then the side effects of the drugs after.  So, they are very intense, but also, I am still here, I did not expect to be here. October, this year October I got told I would not be here three years ago, so it shows what clinical trials can actually do for you.  I’m still here, I still live a very good life. We go walking, the wife and I quite often, and we did three, four-mile last night, and we just enjoy our lives. 

People don’t realize…a lot of men don’t talk about it the physical side and the sexual side of prostate cancer, the treatment, because your libido to go, and it just causes a [inaudible] of your testosterone. You don’t feel like…and it’s a closeness that you lose… Amanda’s been unbelievable, she’s been there for me all the way through. She’s my rock, she’s the one went down down, she pushes me, but then she has days where she’s down. And this is where people need to realize the partners will improve the encounters much as the patient. And this is some of them we talked about…we’re very open about people where we talk about it. We have our days, the last couple of days I’ve been down. But she’s there to try and help me get back, and I try and do it for her when she is…and the family is the same, having the family support, when I’ve been to appointments, I get phone calls, quite a few, I get messages how are things going. And it’s just nice knowing that people do care, we have friends who keep in touch all the time, make sure everything’s okay, and you need that support of your family and friends. 

It’s very important for them to be there with you. 

The clinical trial to me is drugs that normally are not being used on humans before. They’ve only been tested in the laboratories. So, the first stage is a dosage stage where they check in and see what a person can actually take…so different people have different amounts of the dose.  And then from there they go to the expansion stage, and that is when they bring more people, and they know what dose to give people. Well, it’s to find new drugs, which can help other people in the future, as well as myself…I always say to myself, “This could help someone in the future, live for longer, stay longer with their family, be there longer.” It’s helping me other months, as I say, but it’s also to help other people in the future, something that’s not been used with people before.  

What I would say to other people who are thinking of going on clinical trials and the families is go for it. They are done so carefully, you’re checked all the time, your bloods are checked, your health is checked, your [inaudible]. It’s something that you can stay longer with your family. There could be cures in the future with this as well, no one actually knows, and it’s something people should not be scared of doing. Like I said, I’m on my third trial, and I will keep on going, I know there are more trials for me after this. And I will keep on going.