Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

Sam Chang, M.D., professor of Urologic Surgery at Vanderbilt, received a top honor from the American Urological Association (AUA) at the group’s recent annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Chang was named to receive the Gold Cytoscope Award, presented yearly to a urologist who has made outstanding contributions to the field within the first 13 years [...]

In 1971 — coincidentally the year that President Nixon declared the War on Cancer — a 16-year-old gave birth in Plano, Texas, to a baby boy that she named Lance. He would grow up to become a champion cyclist and arguably the most famous cancer survivor on the planet. Dressed in the trademark yellow of [...]

Kort Nygard opted to wait until his prostate cancer needed treatment. Then he decided to have open surgery. Jim Davidson chose radiation therapy, the external beam type. Sam Dick selected robotic surgery. Three different patients with prostate cancer, three different treatment choices. The decision that faces a man diagnosed with localized prostate cancer is daunting. [...]

Susan Hahn is moving again – into a new home and into a new stage of life after cancer. The Chicago native had moved to Nashville in January 2009. She was engaged by that July and quickly began planning a big wedding. She and her fiancé had also just begun plans to tear down and [...]

The nearly 100 percent five-year survival rate for localized prostate cancer is one of the great success stories in the field. But when a man is told he has prostate cancer, it quickly becomes clear just how frightening and confusing that diagnosis can be. Fortunately, there are many treatment options. But for early stage, localized [...]

Sitting next to the biology and medical tomes on a shelf in Robert Matusik’s office are two stuffed animals: Lady and the Tramp. They are there in homage to the mouse models of prostate cancer – fondly called lady and tramp models – that Matusik and his colleagues have generated. “We are all waiting for [...]

Sam Dick, 54, a television news anchor in Lexington, Ky., had just watched his father die from prostate cancer when he got the news last fall that he had the disease. He and his wife wanted a cure and decided that surgery was the best option. They learned from online research and conversations with physicians [...]

Kort Nygard, Ph.D., 69, a clinical psychologist, considers himself a “skilled practitioner in the art of denial.” He was happy to defer treatment when his first biopsy showed he had prostate cancer. On a second biopsy though, his cancer had spread. His physician, David Penson, M.D., said it was time to treat and laid out [...]

Jim Davidson, Ph.D., 68, a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt, talked to a couple of friends and colleagues after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. One had radiation therapy in the 1970s; the other had surgery about 15 years ago. “So from my huge statistical sampling of two, I had a [...]

About a third of patients who are treated for localized prostate cancer will have a recurrence, says David Penson, M.D., MPH. A small percentage of patients already have metastatic prostate cancer – cancer that has spread beyond the prostate gland – when they are first diagnosed. “Metastatic prostate cancer is a tiger that’s out of [...]