Dr. Schaeffer on the NCCN prostate cancer guidelines

In this video, Edward M. Schaeffer, MD, PhD, discusses his work with the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s prostate cancer guidelines committee. Schaeffer is chair and Harold Binstein Professor of Urology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois.

Transcription:

I'm still very active in helping to develop the National Comprehensive Cancer Network's prostate cancer guidelines. This is one of I think 2 or 3 main guidelines that help us roadmap out how we think about caring for men with prostate cancer. I'm very active and involved in the NCCN guidelines, but [I] acknowledge that the AUA and ASCO also have other guidelines that are nice and very complementary to what we do in our work at the NCCN. The NCCN guidelines are unique in that they're almost constantly updated in real time. So anytime there's a new FDA-approved drug or compound, our committee will meet and discuss and decide whether we think that should be incorporated into a patient care pathway, remembering that guidelines are guides, they're not rules. And so we try to give physicians guidance and input about what would be appropriate next steps for a patient along that cancer care continuum. I'm excited about what will come in this year's updated guidelines. There's always something new across the cancer care continuum. I feel great about the fact that there's high utilization of this as a resource. We know that our guidelines are downloaded over 650,000 times a year, which suggests again, that the content that we're providing in the guidelines and the format that we're providing for the guidelines is a good resource, acknowledging again that there are others out there too.

This transcript was edited for clarity.