One of every 10 patients who come to Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center for a second opinion following a diagnosis of prostate cancer receives a change in their diagnosis. Ahmed Aly, MD, a urologist and professor of oncology at Roswell Park, discusses why it’s important that prostate cancer patients seek a second opinion with a comprehensive cancer center and explore the wide range of treatments available including active surveillance, minimally invasive surgical approaches and focal therapy.
Hi, my name is uh Doctor Ali. I'm one of the urologists oncologists at Roswald Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. I'll talk today about the importance of having a second opinion with special reference to prostate cancer. Second opinions in general are very important and we always encourage patients to have a second opinion because and not only this will bring comfort for patients, but also it might actually um show a different perspective for the options that patients were offered before when it comes to prostate cancer. It's not uncommon for patients to have more than one option. Actually, most of the time we offer patients, uh like all the options, the option to just watch the cancer uh versus to receive surgery or radiation where a second opinion can become really very critical because, you know, coming to a Comprehensive Cancer Center where there is a multidisciplinary approach to basically everything, you know, starting from diagnostics where a pathologist would review the slides and make sure that uh the diagnosis is correct. In fact, just looking at our data and around 10% of the patients. So that's one out of every 10 patients would have a change of the diagnosis just based on the review of the pathology. Also, in addition, the the MRI, the quality of the prostate MRI. So this needs to be done on a good machine um and also interpreted by the radiologist. Uh many studies have shown the differences that can, well, we, we call the inter or the inter review or variability in interpreting prostate MRI S. And then we have a, a biweekly conference where we present all patients with a diagnosis of prostate cancer. And then patients receive a formal letter with the consensus of that group on the best management. So this can help alleviate the anxiety, help patients make an informed decision about the treatment that best, that's that would work best for them. Coming for a second opinion, Rossell Park is important because we have the multidisciplinary approach. We have very talented and skilled uh surgeons in doing for the robotic surgery, the most recent um technologies in terms of the radiation equipment or even or the imaging equipment. Also, in addition to the molecular testing as well, we actually looked at all the patients who presented to Roswald Park for a second opinion regarding their diagnosis of prostate cancer and the vast majority of patients who were recommended radiation in the community, they actually ended up receiving active surveillance after seeking a second opinion here on Roswell, this might be related to either, you know, the anxiety of the patients or the anxiety of even the physicians. Once the patients come here, you know, uh to Rosso Park where, you know, it's a cancer center, we have uh extensive experience in managing patients and surveying them. That's also one of the things that need to be highlighted here.
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