SMART Surgery Prostate Cancer Treatment Expert Dr. David B. Samadi Discusses Findings in Avodart Study

According to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the generic form of Avodart, dutasteride, a prostate cancer treatment drug used to shrink enlarged prostate glands, can increase the accuracy of prostate specific antigen (PSA) tests. “The drug reduced the prostate cancer diagnosis risk by 23 percent,” said Dr. David B. Samadi, a robotic prostatectomy expert, Vice Chairman, Department of Urology, and Chief of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. “The study found the drug could also inhibit slow-growing tumors that may not pose a risk over a man’s lifetime,” said Samadi, a prostate surgery expert who is considered a leader in robotic surgery.

PSAs, the leading diagnostic indicator of prostate cancer, very often exhibit false positives or false negatives. The four-year study by Washington University found that men who used dutasteride had more accurate PSA readings, especially if they were at risk for developing aggressive prostate cancer.

According to the Journal of Urology, a patient’s PSA level dropped as much as by fifty percent within six months of taking dutasteride. The National Cancer Institute reports that 65 to 75 percent of men who undergo biopsies due to high PSA numbers typically don’t have prostate cancer, which makes the drug’s ability to make the PSA more accurate very promising.

The SMART Technique is the most personalized robotic prostate surgery procedure

“This discovery provides prostate cancer doctors with yet another tool in their arsenal for detection,” said Dr. Samadi, who created the SMART (Samadi Modified Advanced Robotic Technique) Surgery Technique for prostate surgery. “The medical community has long sought for a more accurate test, besides the PSA, because of the high cancer cure rate if found early enough.”

However, Dr. Samadi, an uro-oncologist expert in prostate cancer treatment, does not advise the use of the drug for watchful waiting, even for men with a high risk for aggressive prostate cancer, as this practice could bring about unnecessary side effects. A robotic prostate surgery advocate, Samadi employs his SMART Surgery by combining open radical prostatectomy, laparoscopy, oncologic expertise and his own unique robotic surgical experience. He teaches and performs robotic surgeries internationally and recently became the first surgeon to do a live robotic surgery in Israel (see video here)

Dr. Samadi proudly performs this unique prostate surgery himself, with his dedicated Mount Sinai team, from beginning to end, one operating room at a time. He’s performed 3,100 successful cases, thanks to his advanced prostate cancer treatment method that drastically reduces blood loss, transfusions, pain, hospital stay, recovery time and the dreaded side effects of other treatments — a claim that very few surgeons can make. With a record of 97% continence and 85% potency for his patients, “The SMART Technique is the most personalized robotic prostate surgery procedure of its kind in New York and worldwide,” said Samadi.