Book Review: Surviving Prostate Cancer Without Surgery

Dr Hennenfent’s exposé is a watershed in the information available to those who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and to those wishing to improve their knowledge of the problem. Its content may prove critical to sufferers in deciding what treatment option to adopt, and what quality of life and life expectancy they may realize as a consequence.
The book readily distinguishes from many others published before it because of
Dr Hennenfent’s standing as a doctor of medicine. His account is written from inside the medical profession and reflects an intimate knowledge of both good and bad in medical practice. He is also a Director of the prominent US organization, the Prostatitis Foundation, which actively promotes information about prostate infection and has an ongoing engagement with the US Government in identifying research opportunities that may improve the plight of sufferers in the US.
The book bears an authority that has no parallel in earlier texts on this subject.
Dr Hennenfent’s frankness in informing readers without fear or favor of the serious concerns associated with radical prostatectomy is what readers have wanted and needed for decades. He reveals the absence of adequate peer scrutiny of high-risk and inappropriate treatment which is all-too-often being routinely dispensed to patients by his urological colleagues. Elsewhere, he highlights the failure of the urology profession to initiate controlled studies utilizing the wealth of raw data that they have at their disposal from operations they have performed and other forms of intervention they have administered or coordinated. Such studies would offer great potential to advance the knowledge and understanding of the disease, and in turn offer scope for improved treatment outcomes for the current and future generations of patients.
Good science does not always emerge on its own. In the case of the treatment of prostate cancer, it requires the determination of advocates like Dr Hennenfent and an informed and determined public to force the reform of attitudes and practice within the medical profession in general, and within the urology profession in particular. In an era of rapid communication technology, it can be expected that the message of this book will quickly spread to the wider global community, and in so doing will take the debate to a new level. Hopefully, it will also bring about that good science that is desperately needed by so many.
The book is compelling reading not only for those who feel powerless and confused as they face the dilemma of what road to take for treatment, but also for those who know the ever-looming danger of prostate cancer and believe that being forewarned is to be forearmed.

Mr A S McCaffrey
Brisbane, Australia
1 January 2005