In Good Health: The Evolution Of Prostate Cancer Treatment

Jenn White (0:01)

Pross-State Cancer Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in American men, and the second leading cause of cancer death.

One in eight men will be diagnosed in their lifetime, and black men are more than twice as likely to die from it. Between the social stigma and misconceptions about diagnostic methods, it's not something many men want to talk about. Meanwhile, in pop culture, the prostate is often treated like a joke.

Maggie Oblock (0:31)

I'm done, Jaco.

SPEAKER_3 (0:32)

I got a prostate the size of a honeydew and a head full of bad memories.

Jenn White (0:36)

That's from the film Zoolander. Its star, Ben Stiller, later spoke out on the Today Show about his own prostate cancer diagnosis in 2016, and encouraged other men to get tested.

William Dahut (0:47)

Yeah, I mean, it's surreal.

Yao Nyami (0:48)

I think, you know, it's not something that I was really thinking about. If I hadn't taken this test, I wouldn't have known.

Jenn White (0:55)

And that test, that early diagnosis, matters. Caught early, it's a highly treatable disease. And treatment options and guidelines are evolving rapidly. Today, we continue our series In Good Health, when we talk about the health issues that most affect us all, and put your questions to the experts. Today, we've gathered a group of doctors from three of the disciplines involved in the treatment of prostate cancer. I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast. Today, we continue our series In Good Health, when we talk about the health issues that most affect us all, and put your questions to the experts. We'll hear from a group of doctors from three of the disciplines involved in the treatment of prostate cancer right after this short break. Stay with us.

Welcome back to the 1A podcast. In this installment of our In Good Health series, we're discussing prostate cancer. Joining us from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle is Dr. Yao Nyami.

He's a surgeon, educator, and patient advocate specializing in urological oncology. And he researches health care disparities in urological cancers. Dr. Nyami, thanks for joining us.

Yao Nyami (2:03)

Thank you for having me.

Jenn White (2:05)

And Dr. Kirtland DeVille joins us in studio. He's a professor of radiation oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and clinical director of radiation oncology at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, DC. He's also the medical director of the Johns Hopkins Proton Therapy Center.

Dr. DeVille, welcome to the program.

Kirtland DeVille (2:23)

Thanks for having me as well.

Jenn White (2:25)

And also with us in studio is Dr. William Dayhud. He's a medical oncologist and chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society that's a nonprofit dedicated to eliminating cancer. Before that, he held various roles at the National Cancer Institute where he headed up the agency's prostate cancer clinical research section. Dr. Dayhud, thanks for joining us.

William Dahut (2:43)

Thanks for having me too.

Jenn White (2:44)

And we want to hear from you. Have you been diagnosed with prostate cancer or are you supporting someone who has? What's the process been like? What do you wish you had known? Email us at 1A at wamu.org. And a quick reminder that our experts cannot give personal medical advice, so make sure that you still consult with your doctor.

So Dr. DeVille, let's just start with the basics. What and where is the prostate?

Kirtland DeVille (3:09)

Okay. So the prostate, we often talk about prostate cancer and don't talk about what the prostate actually is. So the prostate is a gland that sits at the floor of the male pelvis.

Its real function is to provide fluid to the ejaculate, which serves a fertility role.

The issue is that as men age, it can often enlarge and that we often call benign prostate enlargement or benign prosthetic hypertrophy. And because it sits in between the bladder and the urethra, which is the tube that drains the bladder of the urine and comes out, the penis provides our urinary function. It surrounds that as it enlarges, it can often obstruct or cause some troubles with urine flow and elimination. And that's often why we hear kind of what you referenced before, the sort of trouble with urinating or peeing and having to go more often and getting up at night and kind of the jokes that can come and surround that with men as we age. The other issue with the prostate, for a variety of reasons that we don't fully understand, that cancer can develop within the gland as we age. And so we lose kind of that function that it has for fertility, but we also unfortunately gain this issue that it can cause urinary problems and it can also have eventually cancer, which is essentially an abnormal collection or sort of growth of cells. When they stop controlling their self, they're not self-regulating, they're not controlling their growth, and they can eventually invade locally or spread distantly and cause problems and ultimately death. I mean, for men, it's the most common non-skin cancer in men, and so it is a very common issue, as you described in the beginning.