Key points from today’s guests:
Patrick Lanphier, prostate cancer survivor
- Patrick hoped that prostate cancer was behind him after surgery in 2015 to remove his prostate.
- His doctor in Nebraska said he needed treatment again, but no one in his area offered the exact treatment he needed.
- He spoke to a couple of doctors about the options that he had and proton therapy was the recommended path because of the less damage to the area.
- He originally sought care at MD Anderson in Houston, but there was a wait list for treatment and it was so far away. He was impressed with Dr. Chen and the team at The University of Kansas Cancer Center, plus it was closer to home, so he received treatment here.
- He recommends making sure you get to treatment when you should and have regular checkups every year.
Dr. Ronald Chen, chair, radiation oncology, The University of Kansas Cancer Center
- One of the major reasons why the University of Kansas Cancer Center opened a proton center is exactly what Patrick experienced – making sure we take care of patients in the Midwest.
- As an NCI designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, we offer all the best options for cancer patients, so they don't have to travel to other locations far away to get the best treatment.
- Our proton program opened about a year and a half ago and is drawing patients not only from Kansas and Missouri, but from Nebraska, Arkansas and some of the other surrounding states so that people can stay closer to home and get the best treatment possible.
- Patrick had a PSA blood test which is a pretty good blood test for prostate cancer. It’s the same blood test is also used to monitor the cancer after treatment.
- When your prostate is removed, that PSA test really should be zero and if it's not zero, and if it's rising, it indicates that there's still some prostate left behind. That alerted Patrick and the doctors that we have to do something more.
- So we wanted to start what we call salvage treatment as soon as possible before the PSA gets very high.
- It's really just a small amount of cancer that we can't really see on scans. And so in this case, after surgery when the PSA is still relatively low, we source our treatment -- oftentimes radiation to the area where the prostate was -- the most likely place where there may be some cancer left behind.
- Proton therapy is a form of radiation and the unique aspect of proton therapy is that we can hit the area where we need to treat and reduce the dose to other surrounding tissue to avoid side effects.
Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director, infection prevention and control, The University of Kansas Health System
- The Health System has 15 patients with active COVID infections this week, down slightly from 17 patients last week.
- A recent study looked at more than two billion people who were vaccinated in an eight-month span from 2021 From January to August. Study authors called it the largest public health campaign in history. They estimated that the vaccine saved more than 2.3 million lives globally in those first eight months.
- While they are using estimates, it shows the overall impact of the good that the vaccine has done and continues to do.
- We are in a different time period now than we were when there was no immunity, no individual immunity, no group immunity, and of course, no immunity from vaccination. But I think it's a very good study.
- It continues to support the fact of how effective these vaccines are in protecting people's lives and in keeping people safe.
Tuesday, Nov. 7 is the next Morning Medical Update. Meet a Harley rider who’s also a cancer survivor. Gary Shorman hopes his simple message will help other men catch cancer as early as possible.
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