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We are having a hard time with a media release issued yesterday by BJU International in relation to a study just published in that journal by Tewari et al. (Actually, we are having a hard time with the results of the study itself too.)
Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Treatment | Tagged: age, follow-up, orgasm, potency, RALP, sexual function | 4 Comments »
The “New” Prostate Cancer InfoLink has long been pointing out the lack of any evidence that men who are treated with robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP) will have better outcomes with respect to continence and sexual function than men who elect to have the older, ”open” form of radical prostatectomy.
Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Treatment | Tagged: continence, laparoscopic, open, outcome, prostatectomy, RALP, robot-assisted, sexual function, surgery | 12 Comments »
As we regularly point out, outcomes after surgery for prostate cancer are massively impacted by the skill, the experience, and the focus of the surgeon. The tools he or she uses to carry out the surgery may or may not be a factor. We simply do not really know.
Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Treatment | Tagged: laparoscopic, open, outcome, prostatectomy, radical, RALP, robot | 1 Comment »
Academic research into the side effects of different treatments for localized prostate cancer have long been hampered by the lack of consistently used criteria for the assessment of those side effects at baseline and at defined time-periods post-treatment.
Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Treatment | Tagged: EBRT, laparoscopic, radiation therapy, radical prostatectomy, RALP, robot-assisted, side effects, surgery | 3 Comments »
Data reported earlier this year from the PIVOT study and separately from the long-term Scandinavian study have shown that the surgical treatment of prostate cancer in the patients enrolled in these trials showed no median prostate-cancer specific or overall survival benefit compared to watchful waiting in patients of > 65 years of age.
Filed under: Diagnosis, Management, Risk, Treatment | Tagged: "high risk", age, elderly, old, radical prostatectomy, RALP, robot-assisted | 2 Comments »
It will likely be evident to most well-informed prostate cancer patients, support group leaders, and advocates that a man with low-risk, early stage prostate cancer (“favorable histology”) is potentially a good candidate for prostate cancer surgery.
Filed under: Diagnosis, Management, Treatment | Tagged: active surveillance, continence, outcome, quality of life, RALP, robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy, sexual function | Leave a Comment »
Back in March, a group of authors from three major medical centers published a report in the Journal for Healthcare Quality strongly suggesting that U.S. hospitals were inappropriately over-promoting the use of robot-assisted surgery for treatment of prostate cancer.
Filed under: Management, Treatment | Tagged: hospital, outcome, promotion, radical prostatectomy, RALP, volume | Leave a Comment »
At least some readers of this news-blog may be interested in two items posted earlier today on the Medscape Oncology web site.
Filed under: Management, Treatment | Tagged: active surveillance, minimally invasigve, MIRP, prostatectomy, RALP, robot-assisted | 5 Comments »
We are coming to the conclusion that there is a deep divide between how some surgeons think about post-surgical incontinence following radical prostatectomy for their prostate cancer and how patients may think about such incontinence when defined by exactly the same set of clinical symptoms and quality of life issues.
Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Treatment | Tagged: continence, incontinence, laparoscopic, prostatectomy, RALP, robot-assisted, surgery | Leave a Comment »
According to an article by Hirsch et al. in the inaugural issue of Practical Radiation Oncology (a new journal for radiation oncologists and their staff), there are some small but significant post-operative differences in pelvic anatomy between patients who undergo robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP) as opposed to standard, open forms of radical prostatectomy.
Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Treatment | Tagged: laparoscopic, planning, radiation, radical prostatectomy, RALP, robot, Treatment | 2 Comments »
Craig Turner, MD, practices urology in Portland, Oregon, and for the past 6 years or so he has been carrying out laparoscopic radical prostatectomies with the help of a da Vinci robot … but he doesn’t seem to think this has made him a better prostate cancer surgeon.
Filed under: Management, Treatment | Tagged: care, economics, outcome, quality, RALP, technology | 1 Comment »
There has been a lot of media noise about a poster presented at the Genitourinary Cancer Symposium. The poster supposedly suggests that it takes 1,600 robot-assisted procedures (RALP) to be really good at this form of surgery.
Filed under: Management, Treatment | Tagged: experience, RALP, robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy, skill | 5 Comments »
Over the years a number of studies have documented a reduction in penile size after open radical retropubic prostatectomy. A newly published study reports on the impact of robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (RALP) and penile rehabilitation on penile size.
Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Treatment, Uncategorized | Tagged: length, penile, prostatectomy, RALP, rehabilitation, robot-assisted | Leave a Comment »
A new paper in the Scandinavian Journal of Urology and Nephrology has provided detailed information about the design and conduct of an ongoing, prospective, non-randomized trial comparing open radical retropubic prostatectomy (RRP) to robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (RALP) in treatment of localized prostate cancer.
Filed under: Management, Treatment | Tagged: comparative, effectiveness, localized, open, RALP, robot-assisted, RRP, surgery | Leave a Comment »
A newly reported Swiss study provides us with what appear to be some sound comparative data on the relative merits of open radical prostatectomy (RP) and robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RALP) at a center with a relatively low-volume caseload.
Filed under: Management, Treatment | Tagged: caseload, open, outcome, radical prostatectomy, RALP, robot-assisted, RP | 5 Comments »
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