Prostate Cancer Awareness Month

karp-sept-prostate

This is prostate cancer awareness month. Please be certain to be screened according to your family physician.

For those diagnosed with prostate cancer, it is imperative that they understand that there are options for treatment. However, we are seeing two particularly ugly trends emerging in the cancer field.

The first is what I believe is the inappropriate use of highly aggressive surgery in the management of prostate cancer - leaving behind disease and injuring patients.

If you choose surgery, it is imperative that you understand the limitations and risks involved.

The second extremely disturbing trend is the use of “hypofractionation” in the management of prostate cancer with radiation therapy. Hypofractionation means less treatments – which on the surface sounds good – but in reality is extremely dangerous. In order to compensate for giving less fractions in a course of radiation therapy, the dose per treatment must be increased dramatically.  Increased dose means increased risk of normal tissue injury. 

At Rahway Regional Cancer Center, we do not do hypofractionation and we place patient safety and treatment effectiveness as our number one concerns. Dr. Karp, with one of the largest experiences in the world treating prostate cancer with radiation, will meticulously perform a 3-dimensional reconstruction of the patient’s tumor volume to assure maximum radiation dosage to the area in need of treatment with maximal sparing of normal tissues. This will ultimately result in the best and safest outcome. The proof is in our results with over 3000 patients treated with radiation therapy for prostate cancer. 

If you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, call Dr. Karp immediately.

It will be the best decision of your life.

Eric Karp, MD
Radiation Oncologist
Director
Rahway Regional Cancer Center
732-382-5550