Prostate cancer experts say The diagnosis of former President Joseph R. Biden is dangerous. He was announced on Sunday by his office, and cancer spread in his bones. It is stage 4, the most stages of the disease. It cannot be treated.
But the good news, as prostate cancer specialists said, is that recent developments in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer – stationed in a large part of the research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Ministry of Defense – changed what was previously a very dark image of men with advanced disease.
Dr. Daniel and said. Lynn, the prostate cancer specialist at Washington University: “Life has been measured years ago, not months.”
Dr. Jude Mall, a prostate cancer expert at Duke University, said that men who have spread prostate cancer in their bones, “can live 5, 7, 10 years or more” with current treatments. He said that a man like Mr. Biden, in his eighties, “we hope that he will escape the natural causes and not from prostate cancer.”
Mr. Biden’s office said that the former president has symptoms of urine, which led him to seek medical attention.
But Dr. Lin said: “I strongly doubt that his symptoms were due to cancer.”
Instead, he said, the most likely scenario is that the doctor had a test, I noticed the nodules On the prostate, Mr. Biden and performed a blood test, a prostate antigen test. The PSA test is looking for a protein released by cancer cells, and it can be followed by a blood test, and MRI referred to cancer.
At this moment, patients such as Mr. Biden and others who suffer from diagnostic prostate cancer are more fortunate than patients in the past. There are about 10 new treatments for the disease, and the image has changed significantly.
The first line of the attack is to cut the hormone testosterone that nourishes prostate cancer. When Dr. Mall started as a urology specialist in the 1980s, this was done by removing the men’s testicles. Today, men have two properties that give them injection to prevent the testes from making testosterone, or birth control pills that do the same.
But these drugs alone are not enough. Therefore, doctors add any of the three or four allegedrogen blockers that prevent testosterone that is still able to produce in the testes.
Some men, depending on the amount of cancer in their bones, where cancer tends to go, they also have additional treatment, with chemotherapy or radiation.
There were also improvements in diagnosis.
Until recently, doctors have set the amount of cancer that was in the bones with surveying processes that looked for inflammation. Now they have a more accurate examination, the PET survey is called the PSMA membrane. It is used as a radioactive consequence on a mark on the surface of the prostate cells. It allows doctors to detect cancer much early, which means that men who suffer from prostate cancer cells in their bones often have a much better diagnosis – because they can be treated early – from men who have bone tests for only a few years.
Finally, if medications that prevent testosterone, chemotherapy and radiotherapy stop, there are other drugs that can be used to suppress cancer.
Dr. Lin indicated that pumping federal research funds, With the effort of Mr. Biden Cancer CancerIn a large part of it led to this progress. “He was one of the first presidents who put cancer at the forefront,” Mr. Biden said.
For Dr. Mall, he said he sees men at the age of Mr. Biden with prostate cancers from the fourth stage regularly and is now more optimistic than ever.
“We have a lot of tools in our toolbox,” said Dr. Mall. “Survival rates have multiplied almost three times in the past decade. I can’t understand how much the change has occurred.”
