Information and Resources
The Patient Access Network (PAN) Foundation offers cancer patients help with copay assistance, out-of-pocket costs, insurance premiums, and travel expenses.
Focus is largely under insured Medicare patients with income between 200%-400% of the federal poverty level, living in the US – grant of about $7500 a year for prostate cancer patients.
Read more on Prostatepedia here
Risk Assessment systems are not intended to replace individualized clinician-patient decision making, but rather to provide a straightforward instrument for facilitating disease risk classification in clinical decision making and in future research.
The classification developed by D’Amico and colleagues is one of the most widely used and is a good starting point for risk assessment. This system uses PSA level (blood test), Gleason grade (microscopic appearance of the cancer cells), and T stage (size of the tumor on rectal exam and/or ultrasound) to group men as low, intermediate, or high-risk.
Low-risk: PSA less than or equal to 10, Gleason score less than or equal to 6, and clinical stage T1-2a
Intermediate risk: PSA between 10 and 20, Gleason score 7, or clinical stage T2b
High-risk: PSA more than 20, Gleason score equal or larger than 8, or clinical stage T2c-3a
Limitations: Does not account for multiple risk factors
Read more and access the risk assessment calculator here on the UCSF site
According to an article in the journal Cancer, men with low-risk prostate cancer diagnosed and managed at high-volume hospitals are 3.6 times more likely to be managed on active surveillance than those managed at low-volume institutions.
Read more here on Prostate Cancer InfoLink
In line with previously reported data, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the used of a 20 mg/ml dose of cabazitaxel (Jevtana) in the treatment of men with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). However, the use of this dose of cabazitaxel is currently approved only for men who have previously been treated with docetaxel-based chemotherapy.
Read more here on Prostate Cancer InfoLink
Apparently, late yesterday, Barvarian Nordic announced that Prostvac has failed to show efficacy in the Phase III PROSPECT trial of the treatment of men with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).
Click here for Barvarian Nordic’s media release
Read more here on Prostate Cancer InfoLink