What Your Doctor Is Reading: Advanced Prostate Cancer Research

From AI-generated biopsy reports to new imaging techniques, these are the latest developments in advanced prostate cancer research that your doctor may be keeping tabs on.

Much of managing advanced prostate cancer is about defining your goals for treatment, easing symptoms, and improving your quality of life. To that end, new research is constantly being published that can help people with advanced prostate cancer make more informed decisions about their care.

Take a look at the latest studies and content that may have landed on your doctor’s desk, as covered on Everyday Health’s website for healthcare professionals, MedPage Today. These tips and findings may surprise you — and even spark some thoughtful dialogue at your next appointment.

One study found that artificial intelligence may be useful for simplifying complex biopsy reports. Five urologists and five pathologists evaluated 35 biopsy reports generated by ChatGPT. Despite a few instances of misleading or exaggerated language, the doctors largely felt the reports were complete and accurate overall. Plus, ChatGPT-generated reports could be time-savers. The physicians agreed that it was quicker to make edits to the AI-generated reports than it would be to write reports from scratch.

Joseph Renzulli, MD, an associate professor of urology at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, wants to put an end to the overtreatment of people 75 or older with advanced prostate cancer. Dr. Renzulli says there is no advantage — only surveillance — for those who are older and expected to live 10 years or less, as treatment probably won’t have a positive impact on survival. But it will likely harm quality of life.

Although this is a tough conversation to have, it’s necessary for reaching the goal of living as fully and comfortably as possible with advanced prostate cancer.

Researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles studied more sensitive imaging techniques to better understand if they could detect metastatic (meaning the cancer has spread) disease in people with biochemically recurrent cancer that’s been classified as nonmetastatic by conventional imaging. (Biochemically recurrent prostate cancer is when prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, levels rise after treatment, which means the cancer may have returned.) Biochemically recurrent prostate cancer is more easily detected through blood work and not always visible with imaging.

Their findings suggest that these tests, called PSMA (prostate-specific membrane antigen) PET scans, excel at detecting the spread of the disease: The test found metastatic cancer in 46 percent of the participants with cancer that had previously been deemed nonmetastatic.

Another triumph for PSMA PET scans: Research suggests this imaging technique may reduce mortality risk and improve quality of life in men with biochemically recurrent prostate cancer.

“Our results estimated that PSMA PET imaging strategies would result in nearly one additional year of life and 0.8 quality-adjusted life years per patient,” says Michael S. Leapman, MD, an associate professor of urology at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. Quality-adjusted life years take into account both quantity and quality of life with treatment.

Fatigue is an expected side effect of prostate cancer treatment. What’s unexpected, though, is Renzulli’s advice for managing it, which is to keep up with your day-to-day as much as possible. He says people with prostate cancer who stick to their regular routines can often cope with fatigue better.

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