FLOWERY BRANCH — Falcons owner Arthur Blank announced that he has prostate cancer on Tuesday in a statement released by the team.
Dr. S. Adam Ramin, an urologist and medical director of Urology Cancer Specialists in Los Angeles, laid out some of the issues that Blank is confronting.
“For treatable prostate cancer there are many options,” Ramin said. “One of the options is a surgical one where we do surgery for the prostate. The surgical part involves moving the prostate in its entirety and saving the nerves that help with erections removing the lymph noids that sometimes cancer can spread to. This procedure can either be done through an open surgery called an open radical prostatectomy or it can be done robotically, which is called robotics assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy. Both of these procedures have an excellent chance of curing patients with prostate cancer. But in my opinion, the robotic surgery is a better option.
“Robotic surgery affords patients the opportunity to recover faster and have less bleeding, less injury to their nerves and have a better functional outcome. Meaning less of a chance of having erectile dysfunction and less chance of having incontinence after surgery.”
Blank stated that he has elected an “aggressive approach that will include surgery.”
Ramin explained the different options under an aggressive approach.
“Generally speaking, aggressive surgery means removing the prostate in its entirety and that can either be done robotically or open,” Ramin said. “Just because they say there are going to do aggressive surgery, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be an open surgery.
“However, again, depending on who he has seen and what his own wishes are, some patients will decide on proceeding with the robotic methods and some patients will decide on with the open method to have he surgery.”
Blank is 73. There is some controversy over how often older men should be check for prostate cancer.
“There is a governmental agency that came out and made some recommendations to not get prostate cancer checked in the higher ages,” Ramin said. “But, what they did recommend is that if a patient desired to get checked, the doctors should order screening tests like doing a rectal exam and doing the PSA blood test.
“Having said that, myself and many other urologists who deal with a lot of Cancer patients, feel that recommendation has done a tremendous disservice to the men in our country. This particular recommendation of not checking for prostate cancer has led to us diagnosing prostate cancer in men further along in the cancer stage and missing the opportunity to find prostate cancer earlier. Unfortunately, that translates in to less opportunities to cure them of prostate cancer. It also means that when they have prostate cancer we have to be more aggressive with our treatment.
“So, I look at this essentially any man who is physiologically healthy and has a longevity ahead of them irregardless of the age, it is important for them to be checked. Checking it is not that difficult. It involves doing the PSA blood test. Doing the rectal examination and based on those examinations we can determine if any other testing is required.”
About the Author
