By Shalon Stevens Syracuse, Spectrum News1
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September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. Doctors are now using artificial intelligence to better scope where the prostate lies and make more accurate decisions on whether or not a patient should undergo surgery or radiation.
“About 200,000 men pus get diagnosed with prostate cancer every year,” said Dr. David Albala, the chief of urology at Crouse Hospital and part of the Associated Medical Professionals of New York, a multi-speciality medical practice based in Syracuse.
“The traditional options for most patients that have prostate cancer have been either active surveillance in which we follow the disease, if it’s not very aggressive or making a recommendation of surgery to remove the prostate. Or radiate the prostate with X-ray beams,” said Albala.
With AI, Albala says they’re able to make more precise decisions on how a patient’s prostate should be treated.
“Up until recently, we’ve not had any really great tools other than surgeons experience. But now we’re starting to use AI and there’s a product available unfold AI, which essentially helps determine before we do surgery or radiation, is the disease contained within the prostate?” said Albala.
“In this case, we’re doing stereotactic body radiation to be able to deliver radiation treatment in only five days on advanced radiation machines,” said Dr. Steven Finkelstein, the national director of radiation oncology for the US Urology Partners and the chair for radiation for the Associated Medical Professionals of New York.
He says they can use advanced AI to determine if the disease is outside the prostate gland, which would then be treated with radiation.
“And this way, we’re able to treat specific areas and pinpoint radiation to where we want it,” said Finkelstein.
Finkelstein says AI has been a tremendous help for cancer physicians.
“As technology continues to advance, we’ll continue to embrace it more,” said Finkelstein.
