Searching for good radiation oncologist in Washington DC area that Kaiser may approve

Men:

I'm now ten days past robotic surgery.

Unfortunately I came back with a sizeable positive margin. 1.2 cm. Posterior area, with a small area of possible bladder neck involvement.

Good news is everything else was clean - no lymph nodes, no seminal vesicles, no extraprostatic extension.

Cancer at the positive margin is Gleason 3.

Dr. Jonathan Epstein at Johns Hopkins did my path report (as a second opinion).

I spoke to him early this morning, and he seems confident that I will likely need radiation (either now or later), but that radiation has a good chance at success. He particularly noted that the margin area is Gleason 3, and that many of the bad stats you see out there about positive margins, particularly in the posterior and bladder neck area, are from guys that had much more aggressive Gleason levels and/or other bad news (seminal vesicle involvement, etc.).

I have to say dealing with him was great. I see why he has such a stellar reputation. He laid it all out in terms I could understand, and his path report info was FAR more specific and helpful than the first one I got, which never mentioned the Gleason level, the level of bladder neck involvement, the number of positive margins, etc.

Today I'm looking for recommendations for top notch radiation oncologists in the DC area. Specifically I've been told that university centers are the high volume guys in this field.

One possible issue is that I've got Kaiser Permanente health care, and since I'm self employed they force me to stay within their network. Apparently some have been successful in getting them to cover out of network university centers, but it's an enormous effort.

If anyone has any experience in this area please let me know.

If anyone has any recommendations for a top notch radiation oncologist or any experience with getting Kaiser to go out of network PLEASE let me know. Feel free to post either publicly in the forum or by my personal email at info@capitolhillstay.com

Thank you all.

Generally Kaiser won't go out of network unless they don't have one in house. If they don't have an in house person they will usually have a list of doctors they'd recommend or have worked with.

In my area Kaiser actually has one of the better cancer clinics with so good docs so I didn't have to worry about it but Kaiser varies a from place to place.

All the best,
Andrew

Thanks so much for the help so far, gentlemen.

Dave - can you tell me more about Dr. Bridges? Can't seem to find much on him online.

Aachen,

Dr. Bridges graduated from the United States Naval Academy and majored in nuclear engineering and his doctorate from the Uniformed Services University Of The Health Sciences. He is in his 60's and has done over 2,000 seed inplants and has a new IGRT machine (1 1/2 years old) in Germantown, Maryland. Dr Schaeffer from John Hopkins recommeded that I use Dr. Bridges and agreed with his aggressive treatment plan. With both the seeds and IGRT I had 169 Gy's given to my poor body! He did his residency at the National Cancer Inst.-NIH, in Bethesda, Md.

Also, I have Cigna Insurance so I did not have issues with which dr. I had to use.

Dave

Johns Hopkins expertise is in surgery and cancer research, not in radiation. Try and find an RO that has done over 2,000 seed implants. If I had surgery I would have used J.H.