Vanderbilt urologic surgeons are offering an alternative therapy for prostate cancer patients considered to be low-to-intermediate risk, a middle ground between active surveillance and aggressive therapy.

“When it’s you, it’s a whole different feeling,” Orrin Ingram said, gazing at logs burning in the fireplace.

A federal task force has changed its recommendation about prostate cancer screening for some older men. The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) now recommends that men between the ages of 55 to 69 consult with their physicians about getting routine screening blood tests to detect prostate cancer.

Faced with the negative quality-of-life effects from surgery and radiation treatments for prostate cancer, low risk patients may instead want to consider active surveillance with their physician, according to a study released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is the world’s first site to treat a patient in the TULSA-PRO Ablation Clinical Trial (TACT), which employs an emerging therapy that uses MRI guidance and robotically driven therapeutic ultrasound to obtain precise prostate cancer tissue ablation.

The 3 million prostate cancer survivors in the United States are likely to die from something other than cancer, thanks to early detection, effective treatment and the disease’s slow progression.

Beginning this week, Vanderbilt men will have a good excuse to ignore their razors and let their facial hair grow. November has been dubbed “Movember,” a time when men are encouraged to grow a moustache to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer.