cover image Patient's Guide to Prostate Cancer: An Expert's Successful Treatment Strategies and Options

Patient's Guide to Prostate Cancer: An Expert's Successful Treatment Strategies and Options

Marc Garnick. Plume Books, $12.95 (276pp) ISBN 978-0-452-27455-6

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. (July)