PDL17 said...
I wish that mainstream physicians understood the new information regarding treating prostate cancer. They do not. Many on this site, even though they are not physicians, are years ahead of the average physician regarding the "cutting edge" literature. We are not experts in physiology, pharmacology or treating ST-elevation myocardial infarction. But we are smart enough to find the physicians that are "cutting edge" and have listened or to their message. Do not underestimate the information this forum offers. My only concern is that the average patient does not have a clue of these differences in medical expertises. The difference between the knowledge bases of Drs. Strum, Lam, Scholtz, Myers, etc and our local urologist is incredible. New patients, that believe that the first physician they see have all the answers, are literally gambling with their quality and quantity of life.
Paul
Paul, I've found this to be true in my case.
I'm in Los Angeles and my hospital is Cedars-Sinai and the doctors that work there. (Not exactly some lower-tiered hospital.) I understand that they see lots of patients with many different ailments and are swamped with work. There's just not enough time in the day to know all that there is to know. My main doctor referred me to an urologist and a radiologist and both recommended treatment. They saw my biopsy report and that was good enough for them to recommend surgery or radiation. (They never discussed how severe my cancer was.)
I figured I'm going to have to do something about
this because they're experts so I began getting myself into the mindset that radiation was the way I wanted to go. I visited several more radiologists and finally settled on proton therapy at Loma Linda. (Active surveillance wasn't even something I knew anything about
.) As I started getting the financing together for my proton therapy I continued to research everything I could about
prostate cancer.
I stumbled upon this web site and several others where some members were talking about
"waiting and not rushing in." I researched further and found out about
Dr. Scholz and booked a visit with him. Scholz was very thorough and he thought I would be a good candidate for AS if I wanted to go that route. But he wanted a second opinion from Dr. Duke Bahn just to make sure. I saw Dr. Bahn and he was more enthusiastic that AS could work for me at this time in my life.
I ended up cancelling the proton therapy (with only a two weeks to go) and have been riding the AS train and hope I can continue to ride it. I'm 56 so I'm neither young or too old.
When I visit my regular GP each year he still thinks AS isn't a great idea. But strangely enough when I go in for my colonscopies, the colon doctor says to me, "Still doing Active Surveillance? That's a wise decision. That's what I would do if I had low-grade prostate cancer."
One more quick tidbit about
doctors who deal with prostate cancer...
Every year I go to the PCRI Summit in Los Angeles and the most interesting part (for me) is the round table forum they have at the end where a panel of doctors discuss hypothetical cases of patients with prostate cancer and how they would treat them.
One year they had this urologist from quite a prestigious hospital in California who was at total odds with Snuffy Myers, Dr. Bahn, and Dr. Scholz as to whether a patient should do AS or not. The urologist insisted that surgery was required no matter what level of cancer the patient had because you don't know how quickly the cancer can grow and you would be doing the patient a disservice if you didn't operate. His thinking was it was better to catch the cancer now while it was small instead of condemning the man to a life of full-blown cancer which could possibly occur. Myers, Bahn, and Scholz were of the mindset that removing the guy's prostate was quite possibly condemning the man to a remaining life of diminished quality of life. The urologist got quite heated in his argument and would not concede that AS was ever a workable solution. Man, he was hot on his convictions.