Tulane expert available to talk about screening and treatment during Prostate Cancer Awareness Month

Aside from skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in American men.

September is Prostate Cancer Awareness month. Last year, federal guidelines changed for prostate cancer screening — leaving to a lot of confusion for men about whether they need to be checked for prostate cancer after 50.

The new guidelines say that men 55 to 69 years old should make individual decisions after talking with their doctors. But who is most at risk? We have one of the country’s leading prostate cancer experts, Dr. Oliver Sartor, who is available to talk about how men can protect themselves — and when it makes sense to screen. African-American men and those with family histories of prostate cancer are most at risk.

“Our approach is a little more nuanced today. Screening for prostate cancer remains an important tool to prevent the diagnosis of late stage and incurable disease. Coupled with that early detection comes the necessity to do surveillance on those individuals who have non-aggressive prostate cancer, to ensure that they don’t suffer from the side effects of unnecessary treatment.”

One in every nine men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime, and one in 41 will die of this disease.

“The research in my lab is geared toward making patients with advanced prostate cancers live longer and live better. We’ve developed clinical trials with experimental agents that intervene in a positive manner when conventional therapies have failed.”

Dr. Sartor is a professor of medicine, medical director of Tulane Cancer Center and the C. E. and Bernadine Laborde Professor of Cancer Research at Tulane University School of Medicine.

Click here to speak with Dr. Sartor. The New York Times highlighted his research in 2018.