Prostate Cancer

A group of physicians at the University of Chicago has answered these questions in the March 27 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, suggesting a set of guidelines for making decisions in this historically grey area of medical practice.

They say their new rules are the first time this issue has been addressed in modern medical practice.

"We were surprised that there hadn't been more of a focus on this aspect of prescribing for the elderly," said G.

Caleb Alexander, one of the study's authors and an assistant professor of medicine and a faculty member at the MacLean Center for Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago.

"As a society, we spend a great deal of money trying to figure out when to start medicines, but very little thinking about when to stop them," he told United Press International.

"In many cases, medicines that appear to make good sense when viewed in isolation don't make as much sense when viewed in the clinical or social context in which they're prescribed." In a University of Chicago press release, Alexander and his colleagues Holly Holmes, Greg Sachs and Deon Cox Hayley, said they began their work after a nursing home pharmacist told them current guidelines suggested that one of their patients should be placed on statins, a cholesterol-lowering medication that reduces the risk of heart attack o...

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