39 replies to this topic

[stocks]

John pledges not to get his prostate checked:

http://bloggingheads...ideo.php?id=356




Which cancer screenings work?:

http://findarticles...._n12569684/pg_1

[maineman]

Although your article is 3 years old, the points are still valid. We are saving lives graciously through appropriate screening. Mammography still identifies early and easy to treat brest cancer. Colon cancer is a major illness, but caught early is a snap to treat. Annual Occult blood tests (easy as pie to do) starting at age 40 is enormously successful. Colonoscopy is now simple and fast. Screening at 50 saves lives. Prostate Cancer can easily be diagnosed with annual PSA blood tests starting around 50 years old. If the rate of change is rapid, a biopsy should be done. Digital rectal exam is probably useless in an asymptomatic man with a low PSA. Early detection allows us to use a very simple and highly effective therapy that cures prostate cancer without surgery. Skin cancer screening takes few minutes and should be part of your annual check up. When in doubt, cut it off and send it to the lab. I've taken off oodles of harmless looking "moles" that turned out to be cancerous. Menstruating women should get an annual pap smear. Young women should get the cervical cancer vaccine. It works! Screening for lung cancer remains controversial. For now, the best advice is DONT SMOKE. If you were a smoker, get a CT scan at the first sign of bloody sputum, a cough that won't quit or unexplained weight loss. If you were a smoker never forget that most BLADDER cancer is caused by smoking. Check a urine once a year at your physical. Most of the rest of the "cancers" are much rarer, so individualized screening is less efficient, but at your annual physical, with a complete review of systems, head to toe and a complete set of labs, including CBC and a Complete metabolic profile you should be able to detect problems early. Case in point - a woman I've known for years felt well, but at age 81 on her annual exam was found to have an elevated alkaline phosphatase on her blood test. This was the only thing abnormal. Alkalkine phos can be found in bone or liver problems. We went digging deeper and found cancer that had metastasized to the bone. We then found her primary source and cured her. She'd be dead, after suffering, if she hadn't come in for her physical. Make good choices. mm

[stocks]

Testing saves less than one life in a thousand and has its own perils. The great majority of men who get chopped about as a result would have been OK if left alone

Prostate proposal risky

In 2003, Professor Alan Coates, then 58 and head of Cancer Council Australia, admitted he had not had, and wasn't planning to have, a test to see if he had prostate cancer. Wayne Swan, a prostate cancer survivor, called his statement "public policy vandalism".

Coates was not a lone heretic. While it would be rare to find a smoker working in cancer control, or any woman in the same field who had not had a Pap smear, many men who know much about the evidence on whether prostate testing saves lives have not been tested themselves.

A study in 2002 of male GPs in Victoria aged over 48 found less than half had been tested; many physicians choose to remain ignorant about whether they have the disease. What do they know that the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand does not?

The society has recommended 40 as the age for men to consider having their first prostate-specific antigen test, or PSA, and for those in the top half of PSA levels to be considered higher risk and "monitored closely". Those with lower levels could have less frequent testing.

Earlier this year, results from a European trial involving 160,000 men aged 55-69 were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Only some were given PSA tests. It showed that if you screen 1000 men, you will find 82 cases, and if you follow these men for an average of nine years, there will be 2.94 deaths. In 1000 unscreened men over the same period, 48 cases of prostate cancer will come to light by men presenting symptoms to their doctor. There will be 3.65 deaths. The difference between the two means, in short, testing saves 0.71 deaths per 1000 men over nine years.

Prostate cancer is a disease from which you are more likely to die very late in life. For elderly men - those over 84 - the death rate is 767 per 100,000 men, while for those aged 40 to 44 it is 0.3. This means there will be one death per year from prostate cancer in every 330,000 men aged 40-44, an age group the Urological Society now believes should be tested


http://www.smh.com.a...90923-g2l1.html

[maineman]

Testing saves less than one life in a thousand and has its own perils. The great majority of men who get chopped about as a result would have been OK if left alone

Prostate proposal risky

In 2003, Professor Alan Coates, then 58 and head of Cancer Council Australia, admitted he had not had, and wasn't planning to have, a test to see if he had prostate cancer. Wayne Swan, a prostate cancer survivor, called his statement "public policy vandalism".

Coates was not a lone heretic. While it would be rare to find a smoker working in cancer control, or any woman in the same field who had not had a Pap smear, many men who know much about the evidence on whether prostate testing saves lives have not been tested themselves.

A study in 2002 of male GPs in Victoria aged over 48 found less than half had been tested; many physicians choose to remain ignorant about whether they have the disease. What do they know that the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand does not?

The society has recommended 40 as the age for men to consider having their first prostate-specific antigen test, or PSA, and for those in the top half of PSA levels to be considered higher risk and "monitored closely". Those with lower levels could have less frequent testing.

Earlier this year, results from a European trial involving 160,000 men aged 55-69 were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Only some were given PSA tests. It showed that if you screen 1000 men, you will find 82 cases, and if you follow these men for an average of nine years, there will be 2.94 deaths. In 1000 unscreened men over the same period, 48 cases of prostate cancer will come to light by men presenting symptoms to their doctor. There will be 3.65 deaths. The difference between the two means, in short, testing saves 0.71 deaths per 1000 men over nine years.

Prostate cancer is a disease from which you are more likely to die very late in life. For elderly men - those over 84 - the death rate is 767 per 100,000 men, while for those aged 40 to 44 it is 0.3. This means there will be one death per year from prostate cancer in every 330,000 men aged 40-44, an age group the Urological Society now believes should be tested


http://www.smh.com.a...90923-g2l1.html

So are you going to get tested or ignore it?

mm

[OEXCHAOS]

Gotta say, while I'm iffy on when the best time to screen for prostate cancer is, my father and his doc caught it early (and early) in his 70's. It was an inconvenience. Cancer. An inconvenience. No invasive surgery. No radical and clumsy excisions. Hot flashes and a bit of discomfort. Gotta love medical progress. I'd like to keep it coming.

[Rogerdodger]

Here's a fun way to spend an hour in Tulsa: We have a "Bend Over Mobile"

TULSA – For the fifth year in a row, KJRH 2 Works for You has partnered with Saint Francis Health Systems to bring the National Prostate Cancer Coalition’s free prostate cancer screenings to Tulsa onboard the Drive Against Prostate Cancer bus. In addition, this year’s event will also include free screening services by the Tulsa Downtown Lions Club’s Mobile Health Unit (MSU) as well as a blood drive being conducted by the Oklahoma Blood Institute (OBI). The Lions Club will offer free screenings for diabetes, blood pressure, glaucoma, visual acuity, hearing and bone density. The free screenings and blood drive will be conducted on a first-come, first serve basis.



I think it's a great idea.
But I do feel sorry for the doctor.
All day long. Nothing but A-holes!

[stocks]

The Great Prostate Mistake

By RICHARD J. ABLIN

EACH year some 30 million American men undergo testing for prostate-specific antigen, an enzyme made by the prostate. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994, the P.S.A. test is the most commonly used tool for detecting prostate cancer.

The test’s popularity has led to a hugely expensive public health disaster. It’s an issue I am painfully familiar with — I discovered P.S.A. in 1970.

The European study showed a small decline in death rates, but also found that 48 men would need to be treated to save one life. That’s 47 men who, in all likelihood, can no longer function sexually or stay out of the bathroom for long.

I never dreamed that my discovery four decades ago would lead to such a profit-driven public health disaster. The medical community must confront reality and stop the inappropriate use of P.S.A. screening. Doing so would save billions of dollars and rescue millions of men from unnecessary, debilitating treatments.


Richard J. Ablin is a research professor of immunobiology and pathology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and the president of the Robert Benjamin Ablin Foundation for Cancer Research.

http://www.nytimes.c.../...blin&st=cse

Edited by stocks, 20 July 2010 - 09:22 PM.

[stocks]

America Loses Its War on Cancer

There is a front page story in the NY Times today showing how although death rates from heart disease and stroke have plummeted by more than 50% since 1950 the death rate from cancer has dropped by only 5%.

This belies the much touted “war on cancer” which has been trumpeted in the media and amongst our leading medical institutions. I have long been annoyed by the cancer medical machine. The thing the bothers me the most about it how much people out and out lie (doctors, journalists, healthcare administrators) about the effectiveness of their treatments and so-called progress in this field.

Doug Bremner MD, physician, researcher, Professor of Psychiatry and Radiology at Emory University School of Medicine and the Atlanta VAMC in Atlanta GA.

http://www.beforeyou...-war-on-cancer/

[stocks]

Should I Be Tested for Cancer?: Maybe Not and Here's Why

Gilbert Welch, M.D., Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, written while he was a Visiting Scientist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer - the cancer section of the WHO in Lyon, France.

H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH, has written an unusually understandable revelation of the folly of testing for cancer in people with no symptoms. He explains how only a few people will benefit from common tests such as PSA, fecal blood, mammograms and others. He is enough of an insider to be able to explain the flaws in clinical trials being used by "authorities" to recommend extensive testing, and the lack of trials in some cases. The unneccessary biopsies, surgeries, radiations, chemotherapies for slow-growing cancers or even non-malignant ones are presented bravely.

The deaths caused by cancer treatment are aired. This is something very few people, even MDs, know. Even when a treatment can cut the deaths from a particular cancer in half, most current treatments create non-cancer deaths, many of which will be improperly reported.

There are good explanations of how 5-year survival rates are calculated, how age-adjustments are made, how randomization for trials is done, and other things not even taught in medical school, but reserved for medical researchers.


http://www.amazon.co...e/dp/0520248368

[maineman]

Should I Be Tested for Cancer?: Maybe Not and Here's Why

Gilbert Welch, M.D., Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, written while he was a Visiting Scientist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer - the cancer section of the WHO in Lyon, France.

H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH, has written an unusually understandable revelation of the folly of testing for cancer in people with no symptoms. He explains how only a few people will benefit from common tests such as PSA, fecal blood, mammograms and others. He is enough of an insider to be able to explain the flaws in clinical trials being used by "authorities" to recommend extensive testing, and the lack of trials in some cases. The unneccessary biopsies, surgeries, radiations, chemotherapies for slow-growing cancers or even non-malignant ones are presented bravely.

The deaths caused by cancer treatment are aired. This is something very few people, even MDs, know. Even when a treatment can cut the deaths from a particular cancer in half, most current treatments create non-cancer deaths, many of which will be improperly reported.

There are good explanations of how 5-year survival rates are calculated, how age-adjustments are made, how randomization for trials is done, and other things not even taught in medical school, but reserved for medical researchers.


http://www.amazon.co...e/dp/0520248368

So you are not going to get appropriate screening? Or your wife/sister/mother/grandmother/friends? How come the hundreds of happy survivors in my practice are glad we caught their cancers early enough to treat? Are we/they wrong to be alive? Proper screening properly applied saves lives.

mm