New book written to inform patients, partners about prostate cancer

In this video, Neil H. Baum, MD, and David F. Mobley, MD, discuss the content included in their recent book, “Prostate Cancer: Expert Advice for Helping Your Loved One.” Baum is a professor of clinical urology at Tulane Medical School, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobley is an associate professor of clinical urology at Weill Cornell Medical College in Houston, Texas.

Video Transcript:

Mobley: We tried to take prostate cancer from beginning to end, the end being men who die of prostate cancer. Fortunately, somewhere around 85% of men survive prostate cancer. About 15% of men who develop prostate cancer will die of the disease. The other 85% that have prostate cancer are either cured or died of some other condition. We wanted to take it from the very beginning to the very end that I just mentioned. So, we start off with screening, what's important in screening, prostate exams, PSA tests, other tests like that. And then we carried it through to if you have a diagnosis, what does this mean? How are prostate cancers graded? What's serious, what's not serious? And of course, we went on to all the different forms of treatment for either localized curable cancer or advanced prostate cancer.

Baum: Well, one of the things that I thought that our book was so helpful, and since we're trying to appeal to our urologic colleagues, is that we would go through some of the aspects regarding what are the different treatment options. If the urologist tells the patient, you have the disease that's confined to your prostate, we need to remove that prostate gland. Well, there are other options that the urologist may not have the time to go through, and we wanted to give those options so that the patient and the partner were fully informed that there were different possibilities regarding treatment. Also, we went through the complications associated with each different treatment option. Again, the urologists may not have the time to go through that with each and every one of those options that are available. But we wanted the man and the partner to know that these were the situation. For example, very few urologists discuss the concept of watchful waiting or active surveillance, and that is a treatment option. And that is to follow the patient closely, and that means the patient accepts that they have to agree to regular follow-up every 3 to 4 months if they're going to do that. Well, we wanted them to have that knowledge and that information available to them. That is one of the benefits of our book. It's one of the hopes that our colleagues will recommend this book to their patients and their partners, so now they have a knowledgeable patient. And they can absolutely include in the records “patient received a book on prostate cancer, the chapter regarding treatment was recommended for their reading.” And I think that helps protect the urologist that they have disclosed everything that is available by leading the patient through the use of this book. I think that is a real benefit. I have shared the book with several urologic colleagues, and invariably, I get the response, "I sure wish this book was available long ago, because it is very helpful for me as a urologist to educate my patient." That's one of our goals or our objectives, and we want to emphasize that this is a book that supplements or complements the urologist and their discussion with their patients and partners.

This transcription has been edited for clarity.