As a surgeon we often do things BEFORE we have verification from the FDA on improved survival. Case in point there was a suggestion that hormone deprivation with radiation had an improved disease free time after treatment for prostate cancer. I began using long term hormone deprivation coupled with radiation therapy for my surgery patients that relapsed. I began this years ago. Just this year data was released that patients recieving hormone therapy for long term had an increased survival by 22% over 10 years. This confirmed my decision to treat my patients this way. The data could have come back with equivaqual numbers in which case it wouldn't have been worth doing. I have started using hormone deprivation with my brachytherapy (seed implant) patients. there are no formal results out yet and won't be for years but I think the data again will confirm that these patients do better than patients that do not get the hormone deprivation in addition to the seeds. My point is that sometimes physicians will do something that they think the data will bore out as being beneficial. In this case I think the data does show from the one study that there is an increased survival. Surely there is an increased diagnostic aspect confirmed. I asked my general surgery friends and they all stated that they would use RIGS if it would lead to increased diagnosis of tumor at time of surgery. So I must respectfully disagree. We don't wait for the FDA to tell us years down the road whether we can do something or not if we feel that it has a chance of helping the patient.
I know of course that I do not speak for all surgeons merely myself and the other surgeons I spoke with but I think most would agree.
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