The Patient's Guide to Prostate Cancer

Discusses the risk factors, symptoms, diagnostic procedures, and treatment options for the disease

Originating as a 1994 article in Scientific American, Garnick's text is packed with solid scientific data on how prostate cancer is currently diagnosed and treated. The author, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a medical oncologist at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital specializing in advanced metastatic cancer, gives his own judgments about both standard and developing therapies. Using case studies of 22 patients with varying stages of prostate cancer treated by varying methods, he demonstrates not only what the management options are but how difficult choosing among them can be. Garnick explains the significance of PSA levels, clarifies cancer staging, describes diagnostic procedures and sets forth the risks, complications and trade-offs of surgery, radiation and hormone therapies. An advocate of vigorous treatment, he is critical of watchful waiting and the restriction of patients' options under managed-care systems. An appendix lists support groups, relevant Internet sites and government and private sources of information.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ten million American men have prostate cancer (PCa) and, according to the American Cancer Society, 250,000 more will be diagnosed with it this year. "The issue of how to treat prostate cancer...is complicated by the unpredictable nature of the disease and the paucity of definitive medical studies that examine the effectiveness of various treatments," writes Garnick, author of an April 1994 Scientific American article on PCa. He presents in plain language the complete range of therapies available, explaining the pros and cons of the various management and treatment protocols. An appendix includes a broad array of resources and support groups. Good books on PCa have become more numerous, but this excellent guide through a complex disease and Kent Wallner's Prostate Cancer (LJ 4/1/96) are among the most comprehensive. Highly recommended. [See also "An Rx for Men's Health," LJ 1/96, p. 53-56.]?James Swanton, Harlem Hosp. Ctr., New Yor.
-?James Swanton, Harlem Hosp. Ctr., New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.