OHC Offers an Enhanced Treatment Option to its Fight Against Prostate Cancer

From Evan Z. Lang, MD, MS, OHC medical oncologist and hematologist

September 25, 2019

Evan Z. Lang, MD, MS, OHC medical oncologist and hematologist

If you are a man, you’re probably somewhat concerned about prostate cancer since it’s the second most common cancer among men in the United States. If you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, our team of cancer experts at OHC can help you with a personalized treatment plan, and it may include a treatment option whose use was recently expanded by the Food and Drug Administration.

Approximately 11.6 percent of men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point during their lifetime, based on 2014-2016 data from the National Cancer Institute. OHC treats prostate cancer with a comprehensive array of technological and medical treatments. But sometimes the cancer outsmarts the treatments.

It’s common for some men to have their prostate cancer stop responding to initial treatments. This can allow it to grow and spread. When this happens, we identify new or additional treatments to stop its growth. One of those treatment options is the hormone therapy drug, enzalutamide.

What’s new and exciting is that the FDA has recently approved the use of enzalutamide not just for men whose cancer is spreading, but also for those whose cancer has not yet started to spread. This is exciting because rather than waiting for it to spread, we now have another option to control the growth before it spreads to another part of their body.

Even with the success of these and other treatments, OHC continues to evaluate new drugs and technology.

We currently have three open clinical trials evaluating new drugs and drug combinations for prostate cancer. That’s because OHC is always looking for new, better treatments. We won’t stop until a cure is found, and when it is, it’ll be found in a clinical trial.

OHC has a nationally recognized clinical trials program that provides patients with access to new treatments, some of which may not be available to the public for years. And, OHC’s program has been involved in more than 80 percent of the cancer drugs that have been approved by the FDA over the last several years.

OHC also uses CyberKnife to treat prostate cancer. OHC’s radiation oncologists are the region’s leading CyberKnife experts and use this non-surgical, painless technology to deliver radiation to the prostate cancer with pinpoint accuracy.

If you or someone you know is interested in OHC’s clinical trials, please visit this page and select the type of cancer in the drop-down menu. You can also learn more about CyberKnife here or call OHC at 1-800-710-4674.