CHMC Issues Prostate Cancer Report

Each year, Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center's Cancer Committee focuses on specific cancers and explores new and upcoming cancer treatment options that are then reported to the community. In 2017, the Committee focused on expanding the Richard E. Winter Cancer Center's treatment of prostate cancer.

To enhance its treatment of prostate cancer, the Winter Cancer Center added a multidisciplinary approach to managing prostate cancer patients, by having the medical and radiation oncologists at the Cancer Center meet regularly with Urologist Dr. Lars Thompson. The multidisciplinary group, the only one of its kind in the region, discusses issues surrounding prostate cancer patients including prostate cancer screening guidelines, treatment options, and case analysis, to develop the best course of treatment for patients. The group meetings add a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to diagnosing and treating prostate cancer and other genitourinary cancers.

Some new treatment options that are being offered at the Winter Cancer Center include Provenge and Xofigo. Provenge is an immunotherapy that boosts the immune system to treat advanced prostate cancer. The Provenge regimen is new and exciting technology that uses a patient's immune cells to fight their disease. Xofigo is a radioactive therapeutic agent that treats prostate cancer that is resistant to treatments that lower testosterone and has spread to the bone. Xofigo contains the radioactive material radium 223 that goes to the area of fast-growing bone which includes bone metastases.

The Winter Cancer Center is the only center currently offering these therapies in the North Country.

Additionally, the Cancer Center provides Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT), hormone therapy and chemotherapy for treatment of prostate cancer.