Treating Stage 4 Prostate Cancer

Stage Iv Prostate Cancer Prognosis

The 4 Types of Prostate Cancer Treatment | Prostate Cancer Staging Guide

Prostate cancers detected at the distant stage have an average five-year survival rate of 28 percent, which is much lower than local and regional cancers of the prostate. This average survival rate represents stage IV prostate cancers that have metastasized beyond nearby areas to lymph nodes, organs or bones in other parts of the body.

Side Effects Of Targeted Therapy

Some men may experience side effects such as diarrhea, nausea and low red blood cell counts. Other possible side effects include:

Liver blood tests may also be abnormal.

One of the targeted therapies for prostate cancer, Lynparza® , may increase the risk for blood clots in the lungs and legs. These drugs may also cause a blood cancer such as myelodysplastic syndrome or acute myeloid leukemia, but this is rare.

Exams For Women Whove Had Cervical Cancer

If youve had cervical cancer, you need a different plan to check for cancer recurrence.

Print and share MD Andersons cervical cancer survivorship chart with your doctor. Your doctor can use this chart to develop a more tailored plan for you.

The screening plans on this page apply to women expected to live for at least 10 years. Theyre not for women who have a health condition that may make it hard to diagnose or treat cervical cancer.

Off Campus Access To The Research Medical Library

This system provides off campus remote access to the Library’s online collections of databases, journals, and books.

All MD Anderson faculty, staff, & students are already set up with accounts. This includes students in the School of Health Professions. You do not need to register for an account. You use your current MyID, , username & password to log into this system. .

If you are a student in the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston please contact the Research Medical Library at 713-792-2282 or for information on how to register for an account.

What Is Proton Therapy

Proton therapy is an advanced form of radiation therapy that sends apowerful beam of protons to the precise site of a tumor. Once the protonbeam reaches the tumor, it conforms to its shape and depth, and onlythen releases its full energy. It then stops, sparing surrounding tissue.

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How Will My Cancer Be Monitored

Your doctor will talk to you about how often you should have check-ups. At some hospitals, you may not have many appointments at the hospital itself. Instead, you may talk to your doctor or nurse over the telephone. You might hear this called self-management.

You will have regular PSA tests. This is often a useful way to check how well your treatment is working. Youll also have regular blood tests to see whether your cancer is affecting other parts of your body, such as your liver, kidneys or bones.

You might have more scans to see how your cancer is responding to treatment and whether your cancer is spreading.

Your doctor or nurse will also ask you how youre feeling and if you have any symptoms, such as pain or tiredness. This will help them understand how youre responding to treatment and how to manage any symptoms. Let them know if you have any side effects from your treatment. There are usually ways to manage these.

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Stage I Bladder Cancer

Stage I describes superficial non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer. It is present in the bladders inner lining but hasnt invaded the muscle wall. We usually perform an initial TUR to determine the extent of the cancer as well as the grade. We typically do a second TUR to remove the rest of the tumor followed by intravesical therapy with either BCG or chemotherapy.

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Where Do These Numbers Come From

The American Cancer Society relies on information from the SEER database, maintained by the National Cancer Institute , to provide survival statistics for different types of cancer.

The SEER database tracks 5-year relative survival rates for prostate cancer in the United States, based on how far the cancer has spread. The SEER database, however, does not group cancers by AJCC TNM stages . Instead it groups cancers into localized, regional, and distant stages.

Localized: There is no sign that the cancer has spread outside the prostate.
Regional: The cancer has spread outside the prostate to nearby structures or lymph nodes.
Distant: The cancer has spread to parts of the body farther from the prostate, such as the lungs, liver, or bones.

Treatments For Prostate Cancer

How is stage 4 prostate cancer treated? – Dr. Anil Kamath

If you have prostate cancer, your healthcare team will create a treatment plan just for you. It will be based on your health and specific information about the cancer. When deciding which treatments to offer for prostate cancer, your healthcare team will consider:

the type and stage of the cancer
the grade or Gleason score
prostate-specific antigen levels
possible side effects of treatments
your personal preferences
your overall health and any existing medical conditions
your age and life expectancy
whether you have symptoms

Prostate cancer treatments can seriously affect your quality of life and cause side effects such as erectile dysfunction and incontinence . Many prostate cancers grow slowly and cause no symptoms or problems.

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What Is Stage 4 Prostate Cancer

The fourth stage of prostate cancerdefines a tumor that has progressed to other regions of the body, such as the lymph nodes, lungs, liver, bones, or bladder. The 5-year survival rate for these tumors is 29 percent.

Keep in mind that each case is unique, and figures like these are merely suggestions. As advances in prostate cancer treatment become more common, your odds of surviving this disease improve.

In general, prostate cancer has a very good survival rate one of the greatest of any cancer type. Because prostate cancer is frequently a slow-moving disease, the majority of men diagnosed with it will die from an unrelated reason.

Stage 4 prostate cancer means the cancer has spread to lymph nodes or to other parts of the body. It is further divided into two substages:

Prostate Cancer Stage 4A Stage 4A: The cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes but may or may not have spread to nearby tissues.

Prostate Cancer Stage 4B Stage 4B: The cancer has spread to another area of the body, such as the bones or distant lymph nodes.

Treatment Of Metastatic Stage Iv Or D2 Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer that has spread to distant organs and bones is treatable, but not curable with current standard therapies. Hormone therapy has been the standard treatment of metastatic prostate cancer for many years. Metastatic prostate cancer can be controlled with hormone therapy for many years and new treatment options continue to become available.

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Exams For Women Who Have Had A Hysterectomy

If youve have had a hysterectomy, but have not had cervical cancer or severe cervical dysplasia, you should:

Speak with your doctor about whether you should continue screening if your hysterectomy included removal of the cervix.
Get a Pap test and HPV test every five years if your hysterectomy didnt include removal of the cervix.

Cyberknife For Prostate Cancer: 98% Success Rate

Theres no one-size-fits-all treatment when it comes to prostate cancer.

Many times, it depends on a patients overall health, age, and the stage of the cancer.

But there is a reason more than 60,000 American men choose radiation therapy to treat prostate cancer each year, according to the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

And theres an even bigger reason for patients to turn to CyberKnife, a highly targeted form of radiation known as stereotactic body radiation therapy or SBRT, instead of other forms of radiation.

CyberKnife Treatment Success Rate 98% for Prostate Cancer. You read that correctly. But read it again if youd like. CyberKnife Treatment Success Rate 98% for Prostate Cancer.

Why is CyberKnife so successful? It kills tumors with targeted precision and accuracy.

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Stage 4 Cancer Explanation

What are stage 4 metastatic cancers? First of all, before we go to the life expectancy part, you should know more about this stage. As we mentioned above, this is the last or the most severe stage. It means cancer at this stage has a high mortality rate. It can kill the patients most of the time when they receive no proper treatment.

Why does it have a high mortality rate? You can see it from its name. Cancer in this stage has metastasized. It means the cancer cells have spread and attacked another area or organ outside the initial area where it appears. For example, if you have lung cancer in this stage, the cancer cell has spread to other organs near the lungs, such as the heart and liver.

Compared to the earliest stage, metastasized cancer is more challenging to treat. We can even call it impossible for certain cases. The cancer cell has grown significantly, so the focused treatment doesnt work for it. Because of that, it is also known for its high mortality rate.

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Stage Iv Of Prostate Cancer:

Stage IV of prostate cancer is a very advanced stage, with the cancer spreading to the lymph nodes and distant organs like the liver, bones or lungs. It is categorized into the following stages:

Stage IVA:

In this stage, the cancer has spread to the nearby tissues and lymph nodes, but not to any distant organs. It is staged as Any T, N1, M0, Any Grade Group and any PSA levels.

Stage IVB:

These cancers have spread beyond the prostate to the nearby tissues, distant lymph nodes and other organs. It is staged as Any T, any N, M1, Any Grade Group with any levels of PSA.

Questions To Ask Your Doctor Or Nurse

What type of hormone therapy are you offering me and why?
Are there other treatments I can have?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of my treatment?
What treatments and support are available to help manage side effects?
Are there any lifestyle changes that might help me manage my cancer, symptoms, or side effects?
How often will I have check-ups and what will this involve?
How will we know if my cancer starts to grow again?
What other treatments are available if that happens?
Can I join any clinical trials?
If I have any questions or get any new symptoms, who should I contact?

The Stages Of Treatment

What are the Treatment Options for Stage 4 Prostate Cancer?

Because the stage of your cancer is the most influential factor in how your treatment will progress, weve divided the rest of this article into segments based on the stage of your cancer:

Stage 1 prostate cancer is the least advanced stage. This means your cancer is small and hasnt advanced past your prostate.

In this stage, PSA and Grade Group levels are low. Over 99% of people with prostate cancer caught in this stage survive the effects of cancer for at least 5 years. This means that you can still die of other causes, but you have a less than 1% chance of dying of prostate cancer complications.

for stage 1 prostate cancer usually consists of some combination of active surveillance, surgery, or radiation therapy. You may also be eligible for clinical trials that offer newer treatment techniques.

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Improvements In Life Expectancy

A decade ago, a man with metastatic prostate cancer would typically have a life expectancy of two to three years. Today, life expectancy for men with the same advanced disease is likely to be five to six years. In the UK the survival rate for men with stage 4 prostate cancer is approximately 50%, meaning that 50 out of every 100 men will survive their cancer for 5 years or more after they are diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer*. There is now a much broader range of chemotherapy drugs available for men with advanced disease with greater efficacy . We also have better treatments to control the symptoms of advanced prostate cancer, such as pain from metastases. In this section, we consider in more detail the different treatments that are available and evidence for their effectiveness.

How Prostate Cancer Staging Is Done

Initial staging is based on the results of PSA blood tests, biopsies, and imaging tests. This is also called clinical staging.

PSA refers to a protein made by the prostate measured by a lab test.

A higher level of PSA can indicate a more advanced cancer.
The doctors will also look at how fast the PSA levels have been increasing from test to test. A faster increase could show a more aggressive tumor.

A prostate biopsy is done in your doctors office. The results can indicate:

How much of the prostate is involved.
The Gleason score. A number from 2 to 10 that shows how closely the cancer cells look like normal cells when viewed under a microscope. Scores 6 or less suggest the cancer is slow growing and not aggressive. Higher numbers indicate a faster growing cancer that is more likely to spread.

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Quality Of Life With Advanced Stage Prostate Cancer

Since Huggins and Hodges won a Nobel Prize in 1966 for their work describing the relationship between testosterone and prostate cancer, androgen deprivation has continued to be an important component in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. It is associated, however, with significant cost in terms of morbidity as well as economics. Side effects of androgen deprivation therapy include hot flashes, osteoporosis, loss of libido or impotence, and psychological effects such as depression, memory difficulties, or emotional lability. Recently Harle and colleagues55 reported insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, metabolic syndrome, and metabolic complications being associated with castration and thus being responsible for increased cardiovascular mortality in this population.

Because of the palliative nature of androgen ablation, quality of life is an important component of evaluating competing therapies. Intermittent androgen deprivation is one approach to hormonal therapy that has been developed with the aim of minimizing the negative effects of therapy while maximizing clinical benefits and the patients quality of life. It can be used in any clinical situation where continuous androgen deprivation treatment could be applied.56

Living With Prostate Cancer

Receiving a prostate cancer diagnosis can be stressful. Even though most people who receive a diagnosis of prostate cancer live for many years after receiving the diagnosis, treatment can be exhausting and cause side effects that impact your quality of life.

Many resources are available to help you get through these difficult times:

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Prognosis And Survival For Prostate Cancer

If you have prostate cancer, you may have questions about your prognosis. A prognosis is the doctors best estimate of how cancer will affect someone and how it will respond to treatment. Prognosis and survival depend on many factors. Only a doctor familiar with your medical history, the type and stage and other features of the cancer, the treatments chosen and the response to treatment can put all of this information together with survival statistics to arrive at a prognosis.

A prognostic factor is an aspect of the cancer or a characteristic of the person that the doctor will consider when making a prognosis. A predictive factor influences how a cancer will respond to a certain treatment. Prognostic and predictive factors are often discussed together. They both play a part in deciding on a treatment plan and a prognosis.

The following are prognostic and predictive factors for prostate cancer.

Cytoreductive Prostatectomy Improves Survival Outcomes In Patients With Oligometastases: A Systematic Meta

Stage 4 Prostate Cancer treatment

Definition of oligometastatic disease in prostate cancer:

Less than 5 metastasis on imaging including lymph nodes bones and vertebrae and no visceral metastasis.

Research has shown that cytoreductive surgery offers some therapeutic benefits in certain cancer types including ovarian cancer, metastatic renal cell carcinoma, and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.

Whether cytoreductive prostatectomy should be performed in patients with oligometastatic prostate cancer remains controversial.

Results of meta-analysis suggest that cytoreductive surgery may confer certain survival benefits to prostate cancer patients with oligometastatic disease

Cytoreductive prostatectomy improves survival outcomes in patients with oligometastases: a systematic meta-analysis:

Yifeng Mao1,2, Mingqiu Hu1,2,3*, Gaowei Yang3, Erke Gao3 and Wangwang Xu3 Mao et al. World Journal of Surgical Oncology 20:255

Are Older Men Undertreated

Schwartz and colleagues44 reviewed the treatment decisions and factors influencing them in a cohort of men with localized prostate cancer. Age, comorbidity, and Gleason score were found to be independent predictors of suboptimal treatment. It was concluded that most men older than 70 years with moderately or poorly differentiated tumors and no to mild comorbidity were given suboptimal treatment. Most of these men were undertreated, receiving watchful waiting therapy when potentially curative therapy could have been applied. With optimal treatment, clinical outcomes could have been improved.

Thompson and colleagues46 investigated otherwise healthy octogenarians diagnosed with prostate cancer who underwent radical prostatectomy. At the last follow-up visit, 10 patients had survived more than a decade after surgery, and 3 patients had died within 10 years of surgery. The remaining 6 patients were alive at less than 10 years of follow-up. Seventy-four percent of patients were continent. No patient had died of prostate cancer, and the 10-year, all-cause survival rate was similar to that observed in healthy patients 60 to 79 years old undergoing radical prostatectomy. These findings indicate that careful selection of patients even older than 80 years can achieve satisfactory oncologic and functional outcomes after surgery. It is important to note, however, that the rate of urinary incontinence after surgery exceeds that of younger counterparts.