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…
Most people overestimate the benefits and underestimate the harms of medical intervention.
Barbara M./Flickr
“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…
For many men, the down sides of PSA testing outweigh the benefits.
Gerald Streiter/Flickr
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…
Every year around 20% of Australian men aged between 45 and 74 have a PSA test.
Kat N.L.M./Flickr
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…
Breast cancer rates are rising, but so are survival rates.
bookgrl
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…
Focal therapy targets and kills only the index cancer calls using heat, cold, or electric currents.
Image from shutterstock.com
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…
News of a potential adverse link with prostate cancer comes at a time when the public is heeding the message that the omega-3s derived from marine sources are beneficial.
Sam Catch/Flickr
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…
Blue means positive, red means negative.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/briancheong
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…
To prevent one death from prostate cancer, 1,055 men would need to be screened and 37 cancers detected.
Isaac Leedom
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…
Should a faceless committee decide whether men should have treatment?
Meeting(green) from www.shutterstock.com
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…
A diagnosis of early prostate cancer may end up doing more harm than good.
Medical Office picture from Shutterstock
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