Elevated PSA
Do you know your PSA? It is estimated that 50% of men over fifty years old do not! A PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) is the best, most available indicator of your prostate health. An elevated PSA is the first indication of problems to come. To learn more about PSA, click here.
Prostatitis
Treat Prostatitis while lowering PSA and improving urinary symptoms? How about a 55% reduction of PSA in 3-4 months? Take control of your disease and try this program before risking exploratory needle biopsies! Click here to learn more!
BPH
BPH or Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, is simply termed an enlargement of the prostate. Symptoms include frequency of urination, inability to completely empty your bladder, waking at night to go the bathroom. While BPH can be explained as a natural circumstance of aging, BPH is not a foregone conclusion and can be treated successfully.
The Power of Diet
As you age, the Prostate Gland becomes a depository for impurities. These impurities are derived from food and become a continuing irritant if they are not flushed out of the prostate. Irritation of tissues leads inflammation of the prostate or Prostatitis. Studies have shown that Prostatitis leads to Prostate Cancer. Additionally, a proper diet can help your body fight prostate cancer. The Mediterranean Diet is an excellent way for you to take control of prostate disease and extend your life!
Do you have Urinary Symptoms?
Urinary Symptoms such as, Restricted Flow, Urgency, Nocturia (waking up at night) may be symptoms of an enlarged prostate, prostatitis or even prostate cancer. We recommended treating the causes and the symptoms BEFORE needle biopsy.
Negative, Positive or Inconclusive Ultrasound or DRE?
Negative or Inconclusive Ultrasound and/or DRE (Digital Rectal Exam)? Did your Urologist talk about Biopsy and the Potential to miss the Cancer? Did he explain the Sextant Pattern, Exploratory or Saturation Biopsies? These are terms used when urologists are using needles to find the cancer.
Saturation or Exploratory Biopsies
Saturation Biopsy, a Desperate Search for Cancer? We don’t recommend it and some insurers will not pay for it! Saturation Biopsy is an all too common technique where a urologist may use up to 90 needle cores or more in a pattern to search the prostate for cancer. This is a dangerous procedure with several documented side effects, including bleeding, trauma, sepsis and the potential to spread cancer cells outside the prostate. Why is this procedure so widely used by leading physicians?
Does Needle Biopsy Spread Cancer Cells?
Does Needle Biopsy spread Cancer Cells? A phenomenon termed “needle tracking” is well documented for other cancers in the body and acknowledged as a serious risk by pathologists for the spread of prostate cancer.
The Comprehensive MRI Exam finds cancer without exploratory needle biopsy. Suspicious lesion is targeted by superior imaging capability. This precision results in only a few biopsy cores, targeted to the region of interest.
Robotic Prostatectomy
Robotic Surgery claims “Nerve Sparing” Technique. Top researchers recommend 200 procedures before a physician is proficient! Potency and continence are keys to maintaining your quality of life. Robotic Surgery may be termed “minimally invasive” but the reality is that it is still a major surgery. Know the track record of this procedure before rushing to a decision.
Alternatives to Radical Prostatectomy or Radiation? Absolutely. To read more, click here.
Chronic Disease Managment
Chronic Disease Management is recommended for some cancers by the AUA (American Urology Association). You can live with cancer while your treat it, without surgery or radiation! Learn about a patient diagnosed with Gleason 10 cancer ten years ago!
Focal Therapy, when does it work?
Focal Therapy as a Treatment for Prostate Cancer? There are several procedures that CAN be termed “focal therapy.” Treatments that can treat focally include cryo therapy, radiation seed implants and high intensity focused ultrasound. It is important to know that these treatments are not always “focal,” i.e. treating only the diseased tissue while preserving the healthy part of the gland. A precision imaging tool is required to confidently treat a specific region of the prostate gland. There is no tool more precise than 3T MRI for prostate.
When does Prostate Cancer become Extracapsular?
Can I live with prostate cancer? If I choose to live with prostate cancer, how will know if the cancer has spread outside my prostate? When does Prostate Cancer escape or become extracapsular or systemic, spreading to the lymph system (or metastatic)? No one knows for sure. A strategy of “closing the barn door” by removing the prostate is not necessarily the best decision either. You could “awaken” cancer and actually cause it to spread throughout your system. When do prostate cancer cells become active? It is well known that prostate cancer cells can exist in the lymph system in a “dormant” state for several years. Patients that have undergone radical prostatectomy 10 years ago have experienced a rising PSA from an awakening cancer in the lymph system and beyond. It is possible that prostatectomy, focal treatments and even biopsy may awaken dormant, or slow-growing cancer cells in the prostate and cause them to accelerate growth?
Hormone Therapy, Chemical Treatments for Prostate Cancer?
What are the side effects of Hormone Therapy, chemically treating Prostate Cancer? Anti-androgen drugs have been classified as “chemical castration” due the devastating side effects which include loss of erection and impotency. These drugs reduce your body’s ability to produce testosterone. LHRH Analogs, LHRH Antagonists and Antiandrogens all work to either reduce the production of testosterone or block it at the prostate. Blocking the production and/or effects of testosterone is believed to slow the growth of metastatic prostate cancer.
Chronic Disease Management, Living with Prostate Cancer
Since no one knows when Prostate Cancer can become systemic or escapes the prostate into the body, an increasingly successful approach is CDM. The logic is simple, prostate cancer originates in the prostate. The prostate gland is the best tool your body has to fight slow-growing prostate cancer. Key components of CDM include diet and treatment of prostatitis. Disciplines called “Watchful Waiting,” or “Active Surveillance” have become more popular, but are not comprehensive solution to manage prostate cancer.
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Diagnostic Center for Disease
Targeting Disease…One Patient at a Time Magnetic Resonance Imaging Spectroscopy (MRI-S)
featured at the Diagnostic Center for Disease™ represents a “state of the art” precision scan of the prostate; not seen with any other diagnostic modality including ultrasound, PET, Prostascint or CAT scan. MRI provided by a 3.0 Tesla magnet, provides a spectacular and very detailed image of the prostate that has never been seen with lesser powered magnets in the clinical setting. As some have said, this scan allows us to establish a “road map” to disease, allowing us to do for the patient what is required and nothing more. Furthermore, this scan enables our Physician staff to evaluate the extent of disease including whether the disease, when present, has escaped the capsule of the prostate or whether the disease has invaded the Seminal Vesicles (an attachment to the prostate beneath the bladder). For men who have been diagnosed previously with prostate cancer, this scan may change the selected treatment choice. There is little point, as example, in having your prostate removed with a Radical Prostatectomy when it is established that the cancer has escaped the capsule of the prostate. Additionally, this technology allows us to target a lesion in question rather than expose a patient to “prostate mapping” or saturation biopsies. The risks are high and varied when the prostate gland is biopsied at half centimeter intervals during a saturation biopsy procedure. If you are not convinced there is value in avoiding this degree of bodily insult, ask someone who has had it done.
At the Diagnostic Center for Disease™, we understand that when biopsies are performed the process can spread cancer so we encourage a pre-biopsy protocol that disables and weakens cells that “needle track” from the prostate capsule making it virtually impossible for the locally escaping cells to become a focal site of metastatic cancer. Clearly, we see value in a patient avoiding needless biopsies as well as targeting a lesion for selected biopsies when indicated using the MRI-S images to guide our decision making process. In effect, based on how we see the prostate we are able to avoid the “shot in the dark” approach, thereby, taking the guess work out of the biopsy procedure. In cases where no cancer is found on MRI-S, despite an elevated PSA level, a needless biopsy can be avoided while the inflammatory disease encountered can be treated. We think you will appreciate the way we think and embrace the way we care for you. Spectroscopy, when combined to MRI, represents a unique investigative tool that allows us to look into the prostate cell at the by-products or metabolites of cell function. Based on the make-up of these metabolites, we are able to assess the health of the cells. Cancer cells, as example, are represented by a high level of Choline while normal cells are represented by high levels of Citrate. MRI and Spectroscopy are integral to each other enhancing our diagnostic capabilities. While many sequences of image acquisition are performed routinely during the course of your MRI-Spectroscopy scan, we are looking for a concordance of results that enable an improved diagnostic commentary. To this end, we have recently added an additional scan sequence called Dynamic Perfusion Enhancement (DCE). This exciting scan sequence allows us to capture and subsequently validate how cells process a safe and well studied injectable called Gadolinium. When regions of interest are identified on MRI-S, the application of DCE may be the difference between calling a region of interest cancer or non-cancerous. At the Diagnostic Center for Disease™, we value the health of every person we meet and treat all patients with the utmost dignity and respect. In the event of questions or comments, please feel free to contact us We are here for you!
