There has been a bit of a run on prostate cancer treatment stories in the Fairfax press. See Hoping and praying the PM will promise to deliver on prostate cancer in the AFR.

(Keeping It Nice note: when you follow this link, and if you are not a subscriber, you will see a banner at the bottom of the screen requesting that you become one. However, when you move down the screen, the banner retracts. It may stop doing this if you’ve followed links to the AFR more times than you’re allowed to, without taking out a sub!)

The story is about Xofigo (radium 223) and the tortuous path to getting it into clinics via the PBS. The treatment was approved four years ago, but there has been a largely technical hitch in its being made available at a subsidy. (You can have it privately for about $60,000.) A shout out to the Australian Advanced Prostate Cancer Support Group, whose founder Jim Marshall is among those getting into Malcolm Turnbull’s ear to break the deadlock. I will link to this group in Resources . In a later post from AAPCSG, the PM has apparently undertaken to create legislation to allow Xofigo to be listed on the PBS by the end of the year.

A word about terminology. What is the difference between non-advanced and advanced prostate cancer? In the latter, the original disease has spread or metastasised. Metastases can be to local or distant organs. If the former, it is localised stage IV or D1. If the latter, it is metastatic stage IV or D2.