VIDEO: Role of hormone blocking therapies in advanced prostate cancer treatment

Editor’s note: This is an automatically generated transcript, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

Hormone therapy is essentially the cornerstone of treatment for advanced prostate cancer. And when we talk about hormone blocking, we mean typically lowering testosterone or in other ways preventing the cancer cells from using testosterone. These are really misunderstood, I would say, and there’s a lot of misinformation out in social media and places where patients can access information.

They are exceptionally powerful. We’ve seen multiple studies showing how earlier incorporation prolongs survival. So, a lot of people think that hormone blocking drugs just slow down the cancer or buy some time, but they really kill a lot of prostate cancer and they can be very well tolerated. Of course, there are patients who struggle with very substantial side effects, but there are also patients who can be on these drugs for many years living their lives, doing the things they want to do.

So, I think it would be important to get a better balance out there in media for our patients, because I really hate to see patients shying away from hormone therapy for prostate cancer because of all this negative information that they might come across before they have the opportunity to talk to a specialist who can better put it into context — you know, what the day-to-day will look like on hormone therapy.

So, it’s often one of the first things that I address with my patients is, “you might not know this, but hormone therapy actually kills prostate cancer and patients can live a really outstanding quality of life. And I'm here to hold your hand and partner with you and take care of side effects. You’re not hostage to the side effects. We have a lot we can do, you know, whether it’s SSRIs for emotional changes or hot flashes, prescribing exercise and other lifestyle modifications to keep the body feeling strong.” So, you know, I think these are important messages for us to get out to our patients.