Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, presented “A Medical Oncology Perspective on Treating Advanced Prostate Cancer During COVID-19” for the Grand Rounds in Urology audience in May, 2020.
How to cite: Petrylak, Daniel P. “A Medical Oncology Perspective on Treating Advanced Prostate Cancer During COVID-19” May, 2020. Accessed Nov 2024. https://dev.grandroundsinurology.com/a-medical-oncology-perspective-on-treating-advanced-prostate-cancer-during-covid-19/
A Medical Oncology Perspective on Treating Advanced Prostate Cancer During COVID-19 – Summary:
Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, Director of Genitourinary Oncology, Professor of Medicine and Urology, Co-Leader of Cancer Signaling Networks, and Co-Director of the Signal Transduction Program at Yale University Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut, shares his perspective on treating advanced prostate cancer patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Petrylak is only seeing patients who need to be treated and is pre-screening patients by checking temperature and travel history. If a prostate cancer patient is advanced and develops COVID, he suggests deferring treatment for all non-life threatening situations until the patient tests negative for COVID. According to Chinese data, cancer has predisposed people to a more aggressive course of COVID, so PCa patients should self-isolate to protect themselves from the virus. Dr. Petrylak also shares that chemotherapy may blunt the immunoresponse system on a long term basis, so patients should weigh the risks and benefits for pursuing treatment and take precautions of self-isolating, washing hands, and social distancing if they use chemotherapy treatment.
For other urology-focused information on the COVID-19 pandemic, visit our resource page.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, is currently Director of Genitourinary Oncology, Professor of Medicine and Urology, Co-Leader of Cancer Signaling Networks, and Co-Director of the Signal Transduction Program at Yale University Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut. He is a recognized international leader in the urology field. He earned his MD at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland Ohio. He then went on to complete his Internal Medicine Residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, and his fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Dr. Petrylak has served as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on several SWOG clinical trials for genitourinary cancers. Most notably, he served as the PI for a randomized trial that led to the FDA approval of docetaxel in hormone refractory prostate cancer. He also helped to design and served as PI for the SPARC trial, an international registration trial evaluating satraplatin as a second-line therapy for hormone refractory prostate cancer.
Dr. Petrylak served on the program committees for the annual meetings of the American Urological Association from 2003-2011, and for the American Society of Clinical Oncology from 1995-1997 and 2001-2003. He also has served as a committee member for the Devices and Immunologicals section of the FDA. He has published extensively in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Cancer Research, and Clinical Cancer Research.
