Prostate Cancer Treatment

Hi, I'm Ali Kasraeian. I'm a urologist here in Jacksonville, Florida, at Kasraeian Urology.

Prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer of men in the United States. Most of the symptoms associated with the prostate are benign issues related to urination, due to a disease called benign prostatic hyperplasia. However, people assume that because they don't have any symptoms, they may not have prostate cancer, so the screening becomes very, very important. Basically, that entails a blood test called a PSA test, a simple, easy, inexpensive test to do, and a digital rectal exam.
I'm a big believer in getting that first PSA in your early to mid-40s, because that result can have a very, very impactful telling of your personal future risk of prostate cancer. The prognosis for prostate cancer, when it's confined to the prostate, is very good, almost a 99 to 100% cure rate in that five-year what's called prostate cancer specific survival, when it's caught early, confined to the prostate, and treated appropriately.

A successful outcome for me for prostate cancer is a patient who begins their journey and they're worried about what their PSA is telling them. We can offer advanced diagnostics to find out whether or not we need to do a biopsy, the 4Kscore, ExosomeDX, other such technologies, bring them to a advanced diagnostic techniques specifically to find out if they have cancer or not, when indicated, the MRI fusion biopsy, which we're very proud to have been the first group in the region to offer that to our patients. Then when we find a disease with this technology, it allows us to have very, very personalized discussions about what to do next. Hopefully, in those discussions, our patients and their families, and the gentleman with prostate cancer and their families, are comfortable with the decision that they have made because they are confident in the information that they have received. They're comfortable in the discussions of what to do and they come up the management option that's best suited for them, both in terms of optimizing cure, but optimizing quality of life, quality of life measures.