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NCCN Guidelines Prostate Cancer

Understanding the technical jargon to get to the heart of an issue is incredibly important when discussing cancer treatment. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has issued guidelines for patients and health care providers explaining in simple language the ins and out of treating various cancers, including that of the prostate.

  1. Prostate Cancer

    • Among men, prostate cancer is the third leading cause of death. Among men over 75, prostate cancer is the number one cause of cancer-related death.

    Risk Factors and Symptoms

    • Some risk factors increasing your likelihood of developing prostate cancer include old age, ethnicity (African Americans are more likely to develop prostate cancer), and jobs that expose you to harmful chemicals, for instance painters and workers in a tire factory. Symptoms include changes in urination habits, localized pain during urination or ejaculation or pain in the lower back.

    NCCN Guidelines

    • The NCCN guidelines can help save time and energy by providing clear cut explanations of various procedures to which you might be subject along with advising you of your optimal treatment in combating cancer. For practitioners, the NCCN guidelines provide a best practice approach to accepted treatment methods along with advice about optimizing patient health care experience.

    Sample Guidelines

    • For example, the NCCN Prostate Cancer Overview for Patients clearly explains prostate cancer screening techniques and terminology such as prostate-specific antigen (PSA), the process of taking a biopsy (sample of tissue from the area), and the various stages of cancer along with possible risks of treatment methods.

    Considerations

    • In addition to providing valuable information for fighting prostate cancer today, the NCCN guidelines are updated regularly by panels of experts to provide timely and comprehensive guidance for the future. For example, the 2007 updates changed their procedural recommendations to allow for robotic surgical techniques and further elaborated on their discussion of patient life expectancy.

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