We often get asked about how one can find reliable information about prostate cancer on the internet that is not too technical. The following are some guidelines we’ve used over the years.
When it comes to websites, generally we trust those whose addresses end with “.EDU“ and “.GOV“ over those that end with “.COM”. [Yup, our own website ends in “.COM”, so we must work extra hard to maintain our own credibility.] There are a couple of pages discussing additional tips on how to distinguish the more reliable from less reliable sites at the beginning of the Resource chapter in the ADT book. But, what if you want to go deeper than that and keep up to date on an on-going basis?
Here is what we do—
To get access to original and peer-reviewed medical literature we use PubMed. It is the search engine for the US Library of Medicine and accessible at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
We also use Google Scholar, and you can too. See: https://scholar.google.com/
Additionally, we subscribe to Google Alerts, which searches Google Scholar daily for us on the words “androgen deprivation therapy.” That pulls up the newest medical papers mentioning ADT. Google Alerts is a free service linked to Google and Google Scholar. Check it out at: https://www.google.com/alerts
PubMed and Google Scholar typically pull up pretty technical stuff. The average patient might ask: “Is there one particular site that you feel is reliable, up-to-date, and still accessible to patients with no medical background?” That brings us to that National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The NCCN posts on its website recent updates regarding guidelines for cancer treatments. The NCCN has pages devoted to both early stage and advanced prostate cancer. The NCCN has a large panel of medical experts advising them. To their credit, they have free and accessible information, specifically written for patients.
As an introduction to the NCCN, check out these links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Comprehensive_Cancer_Network