by
Carol Ko, Staff Writer | January 09, 2014
From the January 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Right now it is driven by patient preference. I think lots of the men see urologists, and they don’t give them much in the way of many other options besides “we need to remove your prostate,” and that’s why proton therapy seems like an attractive alternative.
The other issue is, there are also men who are not from Silicon Valley who are not adept at making informed decisions influenced by referring physicians. Urologists sometimes hire radiation oncologists and refer patients to them to get intensity-modulated radiation therapy, developing practices where urologists and radiation oncologists work together — it’s become a vast referral problem that’s made its way to Congress.
Essentially, the prostate issue distracts people from thinking about the greatest value of proton therapy and I think we need to shy away from that. Let’s not spend 50 percent of the conference or even a huge percentage of the conference discussing something that’s controversial and people are going to give their opinion instead of educating or providing new facts or information.
In these other areas I was mentioning, there are a lot of other things going on, especially in head and neck, or in the thorax.
I have become an advocate for proton therapy not because of money or hype, but because of the scientific evidence that supports it. Avoiding normal tissues while giving higher doses to the tumor by whatever techniques you choose — those things are of immense medical value.
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