Carey Melcher refused to allow his diagnosis with prostate cancer this past February to change his life.
He had only one crystal clear consideration: to have a prostatectomy.
“My attitude was basically, I have something wrong with me, I’m not going to get up every day and think about it. My attitude was get it out of there,” said Melcher, a 61-year-old television commercial producer who currently resides in Calabasas. “No way I wasn’t going to have the surgery if I was healthy enough to have it.”
Before he was diagnosed, Melcher said he had been tracking his prostate specific antigen tests for about five years to measure the amount of PSA in his blood.
Melcher said his doctor was confident there would be no significant issues with the disease.
With his first follow-up appointment in August, Melcher added that he is hopeful his PSA screening will register close to a desired level of zero.
Melcher’s decision to have surgery is just one treatment option available for prostate cancer patients.
On Tuesday, UCLA will hold the first lecture in the Updates for Prostate Cancer Patients series from the UCLA Department of Urology and the Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Prostate Cancer.
The talks, which are expected to be held quarterly, will provide information about the latest treatments and research for prostate cancer, said Lauren Whitted, the public administrative analyst in the department of urology who coordinated the event.
Because of security reasons at the hospital, the location of the talk will only be announced to those who RSVP to the event so that the number of attendants can be monitored, Whitted added.
For the first lecture of the series, UCLA doctors will address nutrition, robot surgery and active surveillance in prostate cancer.
Nutritional treatments, for example, may have multiple effects on cancer or cancer prevention, said Dr. William Aronson, a professor in the department of urology.
Aronson, who will speak at the Tuesday lecture, currently investigates the nutritional aspects of prostate cancer.
There are currently no conclusive findings so far in this area, and no specific diets are recommended, he said.
Still, nutritional treatments may act as antioxidants and thereby potentially slow the growth of the cancer through intracellular processes involved in cancer progression. Additionally, different foods have different bioactive substances, he added.
Today, doctors are able to detect prostate cancer at its early stages because of the PSA blood tests.
Nevertheless, these blood tests do not distinguish between an enlarged prostate or inflammation, necessitating more effective screening tools, he said.
PSA does, however, remain the best screening blood test available for all malignancies of the cancer, Aronson added.
Highly effective prostate cancer treatments include open and robotic prostatectomy and radiation therapies, including both external beam and brachytherapy, Aronson said.
While radiation therapy provides highly effective options, once prostate cancer is more advanced and in a more aggressive form, new discoveries are needed to help patients, he said.
Today, new forms of radiation therapy are being tested to more precisely focus the radiation on the prostate.
“In my mind, technology will clearly play a role in prostate cancer treatment,” he said. “That being said, we have to be very careful of the cost of these technological advances to determine if they really are worth it and are at the end of the day helping our patients.”
Improvements in treatments may still be necessary, though.
One concern is to identify which patients need treatment and to follow patients who do not need treatment conservatively to maximize their quality of life, he said.
Patients whose PSA is relatively low and now rising significantly may be excellent candidates for active surveillance, or watchful waiting, to monitor their PSA, Aronson added.
Aronson said he believes that through laboratory studies, researchers can attempt to develop rational and effective approaches and then have prospective randomized trials to obtain answers.
“Clearly the ultimate goal is not only to improve life span, but to improve quality of life,” he said.
The series of lectures is planned to be multiyear, and if successful the lectures will be held more often, Whitted said.
With the current interest in the upcoming lectures, the series will likely continue for a long time, Whitted added.
Future lectures will focus on other topics like radiation oncology, pathology, screenings and research at UCLA.
“UCLA wants to present itself as personalized medicine ““ that not one approach for treatment works for everyone,” Whitted said. “The series is looking to show people … a number of different options that you have, and then even after you do have treatment, there may be other avenues that you can explore.”