Prostate Cancer Demystified: New Life-Saving Prostate Cancer Treatments

Although I am empathic to the first reviewer, I'm not quite sure how he arrived at his conclusions. Dr. Bard seems tireless in seeking to help men with this disease. And, I assume he promotes his model of the Voluson ultrasound because its one of the the best for diagnosis and there are only a few in the US. The large majority of men have little idea what to do with an abnormal PSA reading and end up tossed into the system with an often unnecessary biopsy, not to mention radiation and chemotherapy. Hence the material in this book is hardly 'old news' for most men. But it is important news. This is a valuable book for men concerned about prostate diagnosis problems. Bottom line: 1) many to most men can avoid a potentially risky and painful biopsy (or multiple biopsies); 2) secure better information, both qualitatively and quantitatively and 3) do so safely and pain-free by using specialized ultrasound diagnostics. In this case with the European designed Voluson ultrahigh resolution multi-planar automatic acquisition 3-D power Doppler system (and when necessary, the proper MRI.) My personal research, supported by studies, indicates the PSA, although a relevant marker for treatment, is largely unreliable for prostate cancer diagnosis. (E.g., Gina Kolata, "Prostate Test Found to Save Few Lives," The New York Times, March 19, 2009; for initial diagnosis by blood sample, the upcoming EPCA-2 test looks more promising.) Further, standard biopsies are often insufficiently reliable for discovery and grading of tumors -- i.e., a biopsy can have a significant failure rate in detection of prostate cancer and interpretation of the results. Worse, there is the potential that biopsies or surgery may, to an unknown degree, spread a cancer.(E.g., Ralph Moss, "Are Needle Biopsies Safe?,"; http://www.cancerdecisions.com/020605.html.) In sum, the efficacy of current diagnosis and treatment methods does not appear to be established. The value of a treatment is found almost entirely in the overall survival rate -- how much longer one actually lives in years. Unfortunately, current treatments for prostate cancer (as in the war on cancer generally) largely seem to have failed the test. This is why those with prostate cancer need better alternatives. Yes, the bad news is that prostate cancer is the second leading cause of death among men. However the good news is that most prostate cancer (as much as 90%) is low grade, slow growing, and that most men will die of something else before they die of prostate cancer. The caveat is that men need to know what they have or don't have, because a deadly from can kill relatively quickly, in 5 years or less. "With both cancers [breast & prostate], researchers say they badly need a way to distinguish tumors that would be deadly without treatment from those that would not." (Gina Kolata, "Prostate Test Found to Save Few Lives," The New York Times, March 19, 2009; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/health/19cancer.html?_r=1)