The Active Surveillor: When the Best Treatment is No Treatment

Feb 8, 2024

Before he created The Active Surveillor.com, Howard Wolinsky was a medical writer for the Chicago Sun-Times for nearly thirty years and a regular contributor to MedPage Today and Medscape. When he was diagnosed with Gleason 6 (now also called GG1) prostate he said no thanks as he was being rushed to take on a radical treatment option. Thirteen years down the road from his cancer diagnosis he is one of the country’s most passionate advocates for active surveillance as a first (and possibly forever) step to indolent/favorable diagnoses of prostate cancer.

Program Notes

Links for Howard Wolinsky

• Howard Wolinsky on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/howardwolinsky
• Subscribe to The Active Surveillor: https://howardwolinsky.substack.com/
• Howard’s story in STAT News: https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/11/active-surveillance-for-prostate-cancer-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/
• How Wolinsky became an advocate: https://www.medpagetoday.com/hematologyoncology/prostatecancer/63251

Links for Active Surveillance

• Feature on Active Surveillance in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/well/live/before-prostate-surgery-consider-active-surveillance.html
• Most men with low-risk prostate cancer now opt for acttive surveillance. or monitoring: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/974009
• More than 60% of U.S. men with low-risk prostate cancer are now opting for active surveillance or monitoring: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/974009

Additional Links for Prostate Cancer

• Understanding why Secretary Austin wanted to keep his cancer a secret, but how he can help other patients by opening up: https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/apatientsjourney/108309
• The risks of transrectal biopsies: https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/apatientsjourney/92201
• The debate between transrectal and transperineal prostate biopsy methods: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/991496
• Is low-risk disease really prostate cancer? https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/apatientsjourney/90601