
Really there is no end to the research that you can do starting with the 200 pages here (it is like several books) and expanding out as you like. It has links to studies, papers, articles and much more. Far more than you can cover in a few minutes. Remember you can search the complete site for what you want. The search box is at the top of every page.
This Prostate-Help web site is a virtual encyclopedia of information covering all treatments and aspects of prostate cancer in a searchable format. Most everything you wanted to know about prostate cancer is here. We try to show all aspects of this disease and show what we believe to be the best information available.
We have tried to make a combination of our writings and links to what we believe to be the best Internet sites so you would not have to search and not know what you find - we did the walking! As a matter of fact if you use this site and the links here you will gain enough information to make your treatment decisions. To do this one must consider spending hours not minutes on this site and its links.
In today's society and the use of the Internet there are 8,000,000 hits on "prostate cancer" alone. The problem is that most of these hits are of large pharmaceutical companies and manufacturing companies that sell products for prostate cancer, Universities of all kinds that may or may not have even a decent prostate cancer unit but are selling trials, national organizations that are selling their own beliefs, large and small medical clinics and doctors that also have a product (a treatment) to sell and than thousands of herbal selling products guaranteed to cure. What is the common denominator of all of these - the word SELL. They all have something to sell and they are biased to that product or treatment. They all have the money to get their pages to the top of the list. As a small independent web site we cannot compete with their money and fame. But we try harder and try to be unbiased as one can.
Someone diagnosed with prostate cancer start to learn about his disease from these biased web sites and believes them - hook line and sinker. The patient makes up his mind for a treatment that may or may not be the best for him. If it is the wrong treatment the disease will re-occur and at this point it is not back to step one but now you are dealing with a much more serious disease that may well kill you in time. There is little curative treatment but mostly palliative once you have failed the initial treatment. The first choice of treatment is so critical of your future - you may live or die by this choice.
Is there an answer to getting unbiased information? We believe so and the start is research on this web site. Here we cover all treatments and point you to some of the latest information available. Time spent here is far more effective than browsing the net.
How long should I research? Since it is your life you are talking about let me tell you that I searched for 4 months for 30 to 60 hours a week to make my treatment decision. I had no site like this. I had to dig and dig and spent many hours in a Medical library. There just was not a lot of information available off the net at that time. I have continued to search for answers since that time (1997) for information that would help others. This site is an accumulation of that research and will save you hours of Internet research. And if this site is not enough I refer you out to many other sites that I found useful - biased as they may be but at that point you can understand their bias.
We have a section that you can complete a condensed prostate cancer medical history and ask questions about yours or the disease of a loved one. Here any question is acceptable from the disease and its treatments, to its side effects, ED and intimacy, care of a patient, etc. You can go directly to this section by clicking on "Questions - Let Us Help" and ask the Team your questions.
Just to give you an idea of what this site covers, just click on "Site Map" and read down the table of contents. Next pick a word in the prostate cancer field and do a search of the whole site by inserting the word in the "Site Search" box at the top of every page. For example if you insert "surgery" you will probably get some 70 hits and if you want to narrow down surgery just to the removal of the prostate gland search for prostatectomy and you will get some 30 hits. And you can do the same thing for every treatment modality or other information you may want to know.
If you want to talk to other patients in discussion groups about what they did or ask questions about your disease - you have a list of these Groups/Forums to join at "Mailing Lists and Forums". More information is being added on a frequent basis. And if this is not enough there are not only links on many pages to additional information but a whole Category on "Educational and Research Links" that will give you access to much additional information. This is just a small amount of what is offered to you here.
Page Reviewed and/or Updated
September 15, 2008
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