Upstate NYers...

One of our members a few hours WEST of you just had SBRT at Cleveland Clinic.

Thank you Halbert. Going to look at their website now for the MD's name. Is there a way to find out on this forum who our member is or should I just search SBRT cleveland Clinic?

You're not considering SBRT at Upstate? Too new and you don' t trust them? That Vero machine is pretty cutting edge.

Yeah, Samadi is quite the salesman..I didn't talk to him for too long. for fear he would talk me into surgery. :)

I talked briefly to them..my uro lectures on occasion there so he "knew someone". They believe they have covered the learning curve...but what else would they say? Basically, they said, come talk to us and then you can decide..just like Roswell says. Which brings up an interesting point..that no one here has ever mentioned Roswell, Wilmot Upstate...that doesn't mean they are not good. Sure a top cancer center has experience and all the "doctors" here will tell you that's what you MUST do..like you , I'm not so sure. Just because Tall Allen likes it doesn't mean it's the best route. :)

Pratoman, I remember that thread as well. For low-to-intermediate risk patients, I recall the consensus being that if you go to a recognized tertiary care facility, you're likely in good hands. And they are pretty much everywhere.

IO, you're in Rochester, NY, as I recall. Strong has a great reputation, with some great docs in the University medical system. For the less common treatments like SBRT or Proton beam, you'll have to travel, no doubt.

I just feel like, being in a rural area, that "local" has different meaning for me than it might for others. Local, for me, is a 75 bed primary care hospital that has an ER that for anything more complex than a simple fracture or appendicitis flies patients out to a tertiary care facility. No way was I going to have PC treatment there.

Sheepguy, you are such a skeptic, LOLOL.

Pratoman said:

"… there was a thread on the topic of going to a major cancer center, vs local Drs (in the context of surgery though) a while back …"

I'm not sure, but he may have been referring to the thread I started last Dec. 9 about the benefits of going to a "prominent" doctor vs. a not-so-prominent doctor:

www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=35&m=3547342

The reason I'm not completely sure is that I know this topic has been discussed before in various threads, sometimes even off-topic to the thread it was in.

But the thread in the above link is recent, and does seem to be relevant, so maybe that's the one he is thinking about.

At 81gyguy, yup that's it.

@WORGANY, I consider anything Notth of Weatchester County, to be upstate. lol
Seriously though, there is some great healthcare available in Northern and Western NY

Yeah, just like in Illinois anything south of Joliet is "Southern Illinois". I've driven across NY state many times. It always floors me when I see the first mile marker on the Thruway after you cross from PA. It's a freaking long way from there to Albany...and almost as far down the Northway to NYC.

We live in the Finger Lakes Region about 10 miles south of Lake Ontario and between Rochester and Syracuse; so for us we call anything above the thruway upstate. Anything west of Batavia we call it western NY and the Adirondacks we call it the north country.

I've spent most of this day on the internet looking at clinical trials and hospitals and MD profiles. UGH! Exhausting. My husband and I had a talk this AM and he really wants to go to Sloan.

I was reading alot about the Oncotype DX test. It's still investigational as per my BCBS but I've read where the company has been footing the bill for some. I wonder if it's worth looking into. I see some people here have had it done.

Monday we meet with our Uro, a RO and a MO at Wilmot Cancer Ctr(our original hospital). It'll be our first look at what it's like to talk with these types of docs and we are going to use questions I found on one of the threads here. We agreed he will ask the questions and I will write down the answers so we can review them later. I don't know why we need to see a MO. I guess we will see.

Waorgany-so you had surg at Upstate 2013? Did you have any group meetings with the Prostate Program docs there? May I ask who was your Uro there and what are your thoughts about him?
Thanks for all the advice so far.

Sloan is certainly top notch. LDR gives me the creeps almost as badly as surgery. Who wants permanent radioactivity ? Yeah I know it's not that simple and the half lives are short..still. Then what about even the stranded seeds migrating closer to the rectum and or / urethra...GAK . SBRT seems to be the lesser of 6 evils.:) Are you guys leaning towards LDR?

HDR..boy having that thing stiched to your ass and 50 needles through the perineum ..YIKES,talk about invasive. I believe the first criterion for T2 is palpable tumor on DRE ???? But maybe on imaging too. Many AS programs follow NCCN guidelines for low and very low risk PCa which do not address bilaterality (sp?)..JH does, but they have the strictest AS criteria.
Gene therapy....yeah, someday, as you allude to. At the moment it's anyone guess regarding long term effectiveness. Is has worked, though, sometimes. Expensive and not covered by some insurance too especially for low grade cancer.
It may be longer than 5 years too. :)