In my last post, I introduced you to some new information from The Cleveland Clinic Men’s Health Advisor. I hope you found the information interesting and hopefully, helpful! I sure did as I think the Cleveland Clinic is a great resource for us all when looking at Prostate Health.
Before going forward, I need to take a step back and apologize for the delay in time between ending our series on what happens when you are diagnosed with Prostate Cancer and what is new in 2024. Unfortunately, I had a very important project get in the way of my work to help educate us all about Prostate issues. Since at present I am the researcher, writer, editor and publisher of our blog, sometimes stuff happens that slows our progress. Again, sorry for the delay. Not an excuse but an explanation!
For this next series I am going to break down the information into 3 groups. The first group is going to be lab generated diagnostic tools for detection of Prostate cancer. The second group will be diagnostic tools that are imaging generated tools. Lastly, we will look at some newer drugs on the market to help fight Prostate cancer.
An interesting point here is that I do not see any new diagnostic tools even though the leading institutions are touting them as new!? As always I will present the information and ask you to also do more research so together, we can vet this information and make our own decisions. An example of my frustration here is the 4 K Score Test. It is not new. I had this lab-based test done over 10 years ago and it did not tell us much more than we already knew. With that said, we will look at the 4 K Score Test with an open mind and see why it is called new in 2024.
I am trying to look at all of the 2024 data with an open mind. Honestly, I am troubled with the information I am finding. I am not a Doctor and only have an MBA to brag about so I am in no way trying to imply an ability to make medical decisions. But it does not take an MD or PHD after one’s name to understand that we seem to be stuck in neutral when it comes to Prostate health.
Perhaps I am looking for the Holy Grail where it does not exist. I would like to see some kind of test that could replace the need to go to a biopsy to detect Prostate cancer when all of the diagnostic tools are still designed to help decide when to do or not do a biopsy. Then the biopsy is used to determine if you do or do not have Prostate cancer. It seems sad to me that we are still in this boat in 2024 when we were in this same boat 20 years ago!
Further, most of the diagnostic lab tests are still variations of the PSA test. I have said repeatedly that in my opinion it is a crime that we are still using a lab test that really does not offer any new information to the physician than he or she could gain by flipping a coin and saying heads you have Prostate cancer and tails, you do not! Only a biopsy can give us the answer. So we get a biopsy, which is really 15-20 biopsies and you may feel a bit of discomfort during this process.
I devolve into a rant about what I am finding as new in 2024. In my next post we will cover the new diagnostic lab tools in detail. Agree or not with the direction the process is taking us, it is still very interesting. Perhaps after that it is time to begin probing what is out there on the horizon. Perhaps someone much smarter than I find that Holy Grail in 2025 or 2028!! We can hope, right!!
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