Rethinking risk stratification for radiation therapy

In 2016, we looked at the Candiolo risk stratification system for radiation therapy. To our knowledge, it has not been prospectively validated or widely adopted. … READ MORE …

New urine test shows promising results in detecting, classifying risk for prostate cancer

A newly published article in BJU International has described a way to test post-DRE urine samples for the presence of specific types of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and use these data to detect and classify risk levels for more and less aggressive forms of prostate cancer. … READ MORE …

What did we learn at the AUA this year?

The annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) is one at which a great deal of information is exchanged, but a lot of that information is of limited utility to patients. … READ MORE …

MRI and MRI-guided biopsies — a new Cochrane review

Cochrane reviews are structured, systematic, focused reviews of evidence in the field of medicine that either support or do not support specific forms of diagnosis and management of patients with or suspected of having particular disorders. … READ MORE …

PREDICT Prostate: a new, sophisticated, prostate cancer prognostic tool

A new paper just published in PLOS Medicine describes the development of a new online tool called PREDICT Prostate. … READ MORE …

Modern prostate cancer imaging: application of the right scan at the right time

A new “opinion” article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology this week has addressed the complex issue of how best to think about (a) how we are regulating use of and (b) how we are applying new forms of imaging technique in the management of prostate cancer … READ MORE …

Can MRI data improve older, pre-treatment, prognostic methods?

An obvious but previously unanswered question has been whether adding data from the results of MRI scans to the data used in the Partin tables and in the pre-surgical Kattan nomogram (also known as the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center or MSKCC nomogram) can improve the accuracy of these two commonly used prognostic methods. … READ MORE …

Computer modeling, genomics, and prostate cancer prognosis

A newly published paper on the development of prostate cancer in patients of ≤ 55 years of age claims to have shown that

Using a newly-developed computer model, it is now possible to predict the course of the disease in individual patients. … READ MORE …

Gallium-68 PSMA PET scanning “is a game changer” in prostate cancer

The “game changer” statement above comes from an independent review of the potential value of gallium-86-labeled prostate-specific molecular antigen (68Ga PSMA) PET scanning in the evaluation of selected men with prostate cancer. … READ MORE …

Prediction of potentially lethal forms of prostate cancer

An international, multi-institutional group of researchers appears to have been able to validate a new way to predict risk for aggressive forms of localized prostate cancer that have a high probability for progression to metastatic disease and prostate cancer-specific mortality. … READ MORE …

Are genomic tests for prognostic risk at diagnosis really helpful (yet)?

One of the critical and unanswered questions about the value of genomic/genetic testing in relation to the diagnosis and prognosis of prostate cancer is, “What are the currently available tests actually telling us compared to the clinical data?” … READ MORE …

Minimal residual disease and the management of prostate cancer

The concept of “minimal residual disease” or MRD and how it affects risk for cancer-specific mortality is a subject of growing importance in the management of many cancers. But it is relatively new to the world of prostate cancer. … READ MORE …

Could “single cell genomics” replace Gleason grading in prostate cancer risk evaluation?

According to a study just published in Cancer Research, a completely new technique referred to as “single cell genomics” may be able to improve the accuracy of diagnosis of prostate cancer based on biopsy tissue. … READ MORE …

Understanding genetics, genomics, and their utility in prostate cancer

Our friends at UroToday have just published a perfectly lovely lecture on this topic given by Prof. Lenny Gomella at the recent annual meeting of the Large Urology Group Practice Association (LUGPA). … READ MORE …

The accurate prognosis of recurrence- and metastasis-free survival

A company based on Northern Ireland called Almac Diagnostics has been working on the development of a 70-gene genetic assay (which they refer to as their Prostate Cancer Metastatic Assay) capable of projecting probability of metastasis-free survival in men treated for prostate cancer. … READ MORE …