WKYT anchor Sam Dick finishes radiation treatment for recurring prostate cancer; encourages others to monitor their health

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Longtime WKYT-TV anchor Sam Dick believed that his battle with prostate cancer was over, but found out six months ago that some of the cancer remained. He reported on his diagnosis and treatment as he neared the end of a seven-week course of radiation.

"Being told you have cancer is life-changing," Dick said. "Three and a half years ago, many of you followed my journey fighting prostate cancer and were very supportive as I decided to have surgery to remove the prostate. I was told by doctors at the time, I was cured."

But six months ago his prostate specific antigen levels, which had stayed undetectable for two years after his prostate was removed, crept up, so he started daily treatments at Lexington Clinic's John D. Cronin Cancer Center. PSA levels can vary widely and can be unreliable, but are the best diagnostic tool available. "In my case, a rising number means cancer is likely still present," he explained. Dick's treatment was tailored to his medical condition and cancer history.

Dick has maintained his regular schedule of anchoring WKYT's evening newscasts and had told only a handful of people about the cancer's recurrence, but as he approached his last radiation treatment he said he wanted to remind others about the importance of watching for warning signs.

"We can't see the cancer cells in a situation when we're treating for a rising PSA after surgery, but we know where we need to treat because there is an overwhelming likelihood that the reason that the PSA is going up is because there is residual disease in the pelvis so that's our target," Dr. Janalyn Prows, a radiation oncologist, said in the WKYT report.

"It's not uncommon for men who've had their prostate removed because of cancer to find out years later some cancer" remains, but it's not what I expected, or centrality wanted," Dick said.

His father, journalist and author David Dick, battled prostate cancer for more than a decade before dying of it a few years ago. He referred to that and said, "I feel blessed. They had nothing like this available. The advances of medical technology are a blessing I'm taking advantage of, and I'm hopeful and optimistic it's going to work."

Dick will have his follow up PSA in two months. "At that time, we'll see where I am," Dick said. "Until then, I appreciate all the emails, Facebook posts, and notes of support and prayers. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!"

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men after skin cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. For more information about it, click here.

Federal panel says PSA screening for prostate cancer does more harm than good, but no better test is available

Prostate cancer cells. Getty Images photo by Abbey Michael.

An influential federal panel says testing healthy men's prostate-specific antigen levels to detect prostate cancer does more harm than good.

The PSA test can lead to unnecessary biopsies for men who turn out to be cancer-free. Those biopsies can also lead to men being treated for cancers that are so slow-growing (a characteristic of most prostate cancers) that they didn't need to be detected.

An estimated 1,000 to 1,300 men die annually from complications associated with treatments that are initiated because of PSA screening, reports Alice Park for Time magazine. Moreover, treating harmless prostate tumors increases the chances of making men impotent or incontinent.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force published the recommendation in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In 2009, the panel also recommended that women delay routine mammograms until the age of 50. That was controversial, and "The task force's recommendation goes against two decades of widespread use of the PSA test, a $35 blood test," Park reports.

"The recommendation is not just counter to what the lay public has been taught about cancer prevention but what physicians have been taught as well," said Dr. Michael LeFevre, co-vice chair of the USPSTF and a professor of family and community medicine at University of Missouri. "We've been told for decades to be afraid of cancer and that the only hope is early detection and treatment. So it's hard for physicians and patients alike to accept that not all cancers need to be detected or need to be treated and that there are harms associated with screening, not just benefits."

Through PSA testing, physicians "were finding the cancer earlier, so the time from diagnosis to death was longer, but the patient wasn't actually living longer," explained Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

But there isn't a better test to replace the PSA, and Ian Thompson, chairman of urology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, said to reject it completely is unwise. He said U.S. death rates from prostate cancer dropped between 30 and 50 percent since the screening became commonplace in the early 1990s, though those numbers could also have been influenced by more effective treatments. Thompson said he didn't want to go back to the "bad old days" when doctors only found prostate cancer when it was already unable to be cured, reports Liz Szabo for USA Today.  (Read more)