Download Prostate Cancer AbstractR2

Prostate Cancer: Awareness, Diagnosis,
Treatment and Proton Beam Therapy
Gary Evans
Abstract
During their lifetime, one in six males will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, the second leading
cause of cancer death in men. Over 240,000 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate
cancer this year—about the same as the number of women that will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
Yet there is no universally agreed upon treatment for prostate cancer, leaving the patient to choose
among surgery, radiation (photon or proton), radioactive seeds, cryosurgery, active surveillance and
other procedures including hormonal therapy, chemotherapy, high frequency ultrasound, and
alternative medicine. Adding to the confusion, a U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently
recommended against testing for prostate cancer, in part because such cancers sometimes are slow
growing and perhaps harmless while the treatments can cause significant health problems including
incontinence and impotence. In this talk, the speaker will describe why he chose to have his prostate
cancer treated by proton beam therapy over a ten-week period during the Fall 2012 semester, while
teaching his electrical engineering class on semiconductor devices from California. Proton Beam
Therapy, while controversial because of high cost, is reported to have minimal or even no side effects
during and after treatment by most all patients. As an indication of the gentleness of the therapy, the
speaker ran a marathon towards the end of his treatment.
Speaker Biography
Gary A. Evans received the BSEE degree from the University of
Washington, Seattle, and the MSEE and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering and physics from the California Institute of Technology. In
1992 he left RCA Laboratories to join Southern Methodist University as a
Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department. He was a co-founder
and a member of the Board of Directors of the semiconductor laser company
Photodigm (2000 – 2011) and is a past President of the SMU Faculty Senate
(2007-2008). He has over 280 publications and 30 patents related to
semiconductor lasers and photonics and is co-editor of the book Surface
Emitting Semiconductor Lasers. Gary was elected a Fellow of the Institute
of Electrical and Electronic Engineers for “contributions to the development,
fabrication, and understanding of semiconductor lasers,” was an Associate
Editor of the IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS and continues to
serve on numerous national and international technical committees.