Screening for prostate cancer using the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test for men with no symptoms is controversial: experts are divided, and Australians are not routinely well-informed. Prostate cancer…
Across 38 years in tobacco control, I have been asked countless times in media interviews if I ever smoked. It’s often an early question. I always unhesitatingly explain that I did: I stopped in my mid…
“It might do me some good and it won’t hurt to give it a go.” How often have you heard a phrase like this? Most people have naïve optimism about medical care. That’s the finding of a systematic review…
Cancer Council Australia and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia yesterday released new draft guidelines to help GPs counsel men who ask about prostate cancer tests. They advise GPs to explain…
Healthy men aged 50 to 69 years who request a prostate cancer check will be offered a blood test every two years if draft guidelines released today by two peak cancer groups are adopted. The guidelines…
Ovarian cancer is the fifth highest killer in women when it comes to cancer, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society, with about 14,000 deaths in the United States alone this year. The…
More and more people are beating cancer – over the past 20 years the proportion of people surviving the disease for more than ten years has increased by a third, from 34% to 45%. But as the population…
The Movember campaign, which encourages men to grow moustaches each November to raise funds and awareness for men’s health, has helped raise the profile of prostate cancer. Statistics such as “one in eight…
If you or someone close to you has lived with prostate cancer, you’ve probably come across dozens of emerging treatments in your hours of Googling. One such treatment, focal therapy, has been dubbed the…
A report published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute late last week shows a potential link between omega-3 fatty acids and the risk of developing prostate cancer. But it may be premature…
Following Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie’s revelation last week that she’d undergone a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer, it has emerged that a 53-year-old man had his prostate removed after…
A new, cheaper test that diagnoses cancer or HIV in an instant could help tackle disease early in developing countries, UK researchers have said. Researchers from Imperial College London have developed…
OVER-DIAGNOSIS EPIDEMIC – We finish our first week of this series with Robert Burton, Christopher Stevenson and Mark Frydenberg examining prostate cancer screening. Scientific oncology started with the…
Prostate specific antigen (PSA) is a common blood test used by doctors to assess whether an individual has prostate cancer. It also predicts the risk of developing prostate cancer sometime in the future…
My offer for a public debate was accepted after I co-published opposing viewpoints about the high rates of over-diagnosis and over-treatment of early stage prostate cancer with leading urologist Professor…
Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, AMREP Department of Medicine, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne & Senior Medical Oncologist and Palliative Care Physician, Melbourne Oncology Group, Cabrini Haematology and Oncology Centre, Wattletree Road, Malvern, Monash University