Possibility of 'Cure' for Metastatic Prostate Cancer ( Article I found)

Hi Everyone,

This article crossed my desk and I tried a few different ways to post it....trying again.

Metastatic prostate cancer is considered to be incurable. But now a pilot trial, in 20 selected men with early-stage metastatic prostate cancer, has shown that aggressive multimodality treatment with hormone therapy, surgery, and radiation "can eliminate detectable disease."

Overall, 20% of the patients treated reached the primary endpoint — undetectable prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and noncastrate levels of testosterone at 20 months, which the authors described as "no evidence of disease" (NED).

This endpoint "could not have been achieved with any single therapy alone," they note.
"Although longer follow-up is needed to assess durability, this binary end point represents a first step toward establishing a paradigm of cure in patients with low-volume metastatic disease," they conclude.

Article Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.urology.2016.10.044

Best,

TC
_______________________________________________________________________
dx at 54
PSA elevated at age 51 and a score of 5.5. Tracked for 3 years and PSA between 4.8 and 6.3
Biopsy 7.16/ 12 cores/11 negative and 1 had 20% cancer load
GL 7 ( 3+4)
Robotic Prostatectomy 11.16.16. UPenn by Dr. David Lee
Confirmed biopsy results - Pathology ALL Clear (12 Nodes, Seminal Vesicle and Margins)
5-15% cancer in capsule and all contained
First Follow Up PSA - undetectable ( 3.17)

See Dr. Bostwick's video on this subject under my post W.B. Ingalls.......

Bobby Mac

This falls under the category of what we call "throwing the kitchen sink at it."

Definitely not a cure, but a sustainable period of remission for some of the guys, albeit a relatively small percentage. Most (95%) of the participants saw their PSA drop at least temporarily to undetectable; at the 20 month study endpoint, 20% still had undetectable disease, and half of that 20% (10% overall) had results sustained for more than 6-months after the study endpoint.

This data serves as such a vivid, stark reminder of the dichotomy and widely varying range of the condition we all currently call "prostate cancer." Some cases (the largest percentage, actually) need no treatment at all, while other cases (a small percentage of cases) are virtually unstoppable and deadly. It still baffles me that we still label the lowest-risk cases with the name "cancer" even though it cannot cause death, and we "brand" the men who are discovered to have these low-end cases as "cancer patients." This does a terrible dis-service to those with the aggressive form of the disease...

The quandary in prostate cancer medicine is best summarized by Dr. Willet Whitmore, former Chief of Urology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center many decades ago: "When cure is possible, is it necessary? When cure is necessary, is it possible?"

Post Edited (JackH) : 4/26/2017 10:18:55 AM (GMT-6)

I do not know how many bone mets you have, but maybe you could treat your bone mets with SBRT:

Safety and feasibility of image-guided robotic radiosurgery for patients with limited bone metastases of prostate cancer

George