Aktuelle Meldungen

Zur Linderung von Prostatabeschwerden stehen verschiedene Arten von Medikamenten und Arzneimittelkombinationen zur Verfügung. „Alpha-Blocker stellen nach wie vor die Mittel der Wahl dar“, erklärt Dr. Pedram Derakhshani, Urologe im Westdeutschen Prostatazentrum. Diese Medikamente führen zu einer Entspannung der glatten Muskelzel-len in Prostata und Blasenhals und verbessern damit die Blasenentleerung. Eine ergänzende Volumenverkleinerung kann durch die Gabe von 5-alpha-Reduktasehemmern erreicht werden

Wiesbaden, November 7, 2008 – More than 100 participants at the Prostate Patient Forum in Wiesbaden inquired about current developments of preventive care, early detection, and treatment of prostate cancer. For over three hours, the urologist of Wiesbaden, and the experts of the German Prostate Center, answered questions posed by the audience.

The physicians of the West German Prostate Center, where invited by the Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center to participate in a scientific symposium in New York, which addressed brachytherapy for the treatment of prostate cancer. The „International Prostate Brachytherapy Symposium“ is one of the most renowned congresses in the area of brachtherapy research. Together with fellow experts from Europe and the United States, the two physicians from Cologne addressed current advances and improved techniques in seed implantation and afterloading therapies in the symposium discussions on June 22, and 23, 2006.

State health insurance companies are suffering from debt amounting to several billion euros. The financial situation of the German healthcare system is disturbing. One of the reasons is that although there are equal or even more beneficial effects, new therapies are not allowed into the reimbursement catalogue, even if they are more cost efficient than the conventional therapies that have been financed by the health insurance companies for a number of years. An example is the brachytherapy, which is applied in the treatment of prostate cancer. In this procedure, radiation sources (seeds) are implanted permanently into the prostate. These radioactive seeds destroy the cancer successfully by emitting radiation to the tumor over a period of several months. This therapy has long been accepted, but in Germany, the state health insurances companies will not pay for it.