The Prostate – Highlights of Prostate Cancer Advances As Covered in ASCO-SEP
Marc B. Garnick, MD, the Gorman Brothers Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, provides a capsulated summary of key references from the ASCO Self-Evaluation Program (ASCO-SEP) 7. He also distills information of interest for practice change related to urologic oncology, particularly prostate cancer, published over the last 12-18 months. Dr. Garnick covers topics including: the emerging role and trends of MRI following elevated PSA values; the introduction of the first oral GnRH antagonist (relugolix) for endocrine management of locally advanced, biochemical recurrence or de novo metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer; improvements in overall survival (OS) with the addition of androgen receptor antagonists to androgen deprivation therapy; and approvals of three drugs for improving metastasis-free survival and OS in non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Dr. Garnick then reviews ASCO, European Association of Urology (EAU), and ASTRO guidelines published during the COVID-19 pandemic and concludes by sharing data from within the ASCO-SEP chapter on genitourinary cancers that offer a global perspective on mortality disparities for prostate, bladder, kidney, testicular, and penile cancers. He finishes the presentation by pointing out a “sobering” difference in mortality-to-incidence ratios, a parameter to estimate health system performance, between high- and low-to-middle-income countries worldwide.
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