The PCA3 test
The number of prostate cancer cases is increasing rapidly.
Prostate cancer
Prostate Cancer Screening
We asked some of our EH correspondents to report on measures taken in their countries to ensure that men are made more aware of this disease and whether screening services are provided for early prostate cancer detection.
Prostate Cancer Screening
To date, there is insufficient knowledge as to the cause of this disease, or how to prevent it. We asked some of our EH correspondents to report on measures taken in their countries to ensure that men are made more aware of this disease and whether screening services are provided for early prostate cancer detection.
GE's new Discovery PET/CT 600 scanners go global
GE Healthcare's first Discovery PET/CT 600-series scanners are being installed in a number of leading clinics around the world. "This first set of installations is a big step forward in the diagnosis and monitoring of disease", said Terri Bresenham, newly appointed vice- president and general manager of GE Healthcare's global Molecular Imaging business.
MANAGEMENT
Accreditation and standards of Excellence in Europe
The European Cancer Therapy Market
Cancer may well surpass cardiovascular diseases as the primary case of death in Europe by 2012. To prevent this from happening, cancer therapeutics have to shift in focus from the treatment of symptoms to offering a total cure, despite the complex, multifactorial nature of cancer indications.
Tele-oncology proves successful in Canada
An estimated 6.7 million people in developed countries were diagnosed with cancer in 2007. Delivering their care is no easy matter. Tele-oncology, the remote provision of oncology services, could not only reduce the costs of consultations for cancer departments, but also for patients. Kerry Heacox, of i.t. Communications, reports on the success of remote consultations in Labrador and Newfoundland.…
US oncology expertise to spread globally
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and GE Healthcare plan to establish over 25 local cancer centres in various countries within the coming decade.
In vivo biopsy for histological analysis
Early suspicions of cancer, either from clinical evidence or medical imaging, are often followed up on biopsy. However, the removal of tissue for histological analysis can be uncomfortable for patients.
Prostate cancer: Urine test instead of biopsy?
Currently, early detection of Prostate Cancer depends on an abnormal digital rectal examination and an elevated prostate-specific-antigen (PSA) level requiring a prostate biopsy, often associated with anxiety, discomfort, complications, and heavy expenses. The prostate-cancer-gene-3 (PCA3) test is a new PCa gene-based marker carried out with a urine sample.
Robot-assisted prostatectomy in practical use
At the Medizin Innovativ 2008 congress (9-10 July, Nuremburg, Germany) Professor Jens-Uwe Stolzenburg MD (right), Director of the Urology Clinic and Polyclinic at the University Hospital Leipzig, talked about his experiences with the da Vinci robot. Used by surgeons at University Hospital Leipzig since last October 2007, they performed 40 operations in the first two months.
Sono-elastography
Martini Clinic, in the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE) campus in Hamburg, is one of the world's major centres for nerve-sparing prostatectomy. The Martini physicians not only specialise in surgical intervention but are also at the cutting edge of diagnostics, being among the few in Germany to use sono-elastography, an innovative tool to detect prostate cancer. We asked Dr Georg Salomon (GS),…
Laparoscopy in urology
Laparoscopy is playing an increasingly important role in urology and centres of excellence have been established to provide training in urological laparoscopic surgery.
Welcome to ESTRO 27
More than 4,500 cancer and radiotherapy specialists will gather in Göteborg, Sweden, this September for the 27th annual congress of ESTRO. ESTRO 27 is to be held between the 14th and 18th September 2008 at the Göteborg Convention Centre in Göteborg.
Prostate scanning too often performed?
Experts on a US panel expressed their doubts on the beneficial quality of prostate cancer screenings for elderly men. Prostate cancer often grows very slowly and may not kill an older man before he suffers from another death reason, they pointed out.
Elastography - ready to go
The idea of measuring tissue stiffness using ultrasound is nothing new. But lately the field sets a rapid pace. “Real-time, hand-held elastography is now a commercial reality,” asserts Jonathan Ophir from the University of Texas Medical School.
New proton therapy software tool
Proton therapy is very sophisticated way of destroying tumours. Now the Swedish Medical company RaySearch Laboratories has signed a consulting agreement with Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden to develop a treatment-planning system.
Cancer care advances — but at what cost?
Although incremental improvements in cancer care were unveiled at the 44th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology held in Chicago, USA, — the world's largest gathering of cancer specialists, our correspondent Ian Mason writes that, even as new study results were being reported, their cost implications for stretched healthcare budgets were questioned.
Tomotherapy system targets cancer more precisely
When tumours are situated in difficult locations, e.g. near the brain, lungs, prostate or abdomen, patients treated with conventional radiation equipment often suffer severe side effects, which include bleeding, chronic infections or organ function limitations.
Image-guided radiation therapy
Artiste is a linear accelerator and CT scanner combined. At the German Cancer Research Centre, a team of scientists led by Professors Wolfgang Schlegel and Uwe Oelfke of the Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology division, contributed substantially to the technical development of the Artiste platform. They report that users will be able to observe and correct the actual position, extension and…
14,000 urologists flock to EAU 2008
Nearly 14 000 urologists from 84 countries attended the 23rd Annual congress of the European Association of Urology held in Milan, where changing horizons in the diagnosis and therapy of prostate cancer, a symposium sponsored by Ipsen, underlined the main focus of the entire event.
Radiation treatment decisions in patients with prostate cancer and suspected lymph node metastasis based on USPIO-MRI
Prostate cancer is the most frequent cancer in men with about 49,000 newly diagnosed cancers in Germany and 6,000 in the Netherlands, annually.
PET-CT for radiation therapy planning:
For individualised radiotherapy, high-precision delineation and characterisation of the tumour is critical. If highest radiation doses are delivered in a targeted fashion, the chance of tumour cell kill increases and tumour control probability is enhanced.
MR probes for molecular imaging
Molecular imaging aims at the in vivo quantitative visualisation of molecules and molecular events that occur at cellular level. The potential towards clinical translation is huge, because the same modalities used in medical imaging are used in molecular imaging investigations.
Cancer will kill 7.6 million people this year
A new American Cancer Society report estimates that there will be over 12 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths (about 20,000 cancer deaths a day) worldwide in 2007. The estimate comes from the first-ever Global Cancer Facts & Figures, the latest addition to the American Cancer Society's family of Facts & Figures publications.
