This episode of PROSTATE PROS reviews and summarizes the year’s advancements in prostate cancer as well as looks forward to future updates. Beyond prostate cancer, the episode examines how COVID-19 has impacted the healthcare landscape and discusses news of the vaccine. Catch up on the latest and stay tuned for an exciting announcement. Liz:  [00:00] We have an exciting prostate cancer update.  Since recording this episode, the FDA recently approved the PSMA PET scan.  Keep that in mind when listening to the episode.  If you'd like further information, visit fda.gov. Dr. Scholz:  [00:18] We’re guiding you to treatment success and avoiding prostate cancer pitfalls.  I'm your host, Dr. Mark Scholz.  Liz:  [00:24] And I'm your cohost, Liz Graves. Dr. Scholz:  [00:28] Welcome to the PROSTATE PROS podcast. Liz:  [00:31] A lot has happened this year and we've covered many topics on the podcast.  This episode we wanted to highlight a couple of exciting advancements and talk about some updates.  Dr. Scholz:  [00:44] The elephant in the living room of course, is the COVID situation.  That's impacted the way we do business.  It's impacted our patients.  It's impacted all of you dramatically.  I thought I'd give a little update on what's happened in our over 2000 clients.  As you know, we serve a population of men between fifty and ninety plus our oldest patient just turned one hundred.  This is a high risk group.  Men are at higher risk for COVID complications and as we get older, particularly over 80, the complication rate goes up and the mortality rate goes up.  We've actually lost one patient to COVID in our whole practice in 2020.  It was an unfortunate individual that was traveling in Egypt in the January, February timeframe and when he came back to the United States he was ill.  This was before people were really clear of what was going on, went to the hospital with pneumonia, and unfortunately passed away.  We've had other patients, perhaps a dozen or so that have caught the COVID.  They're sort of evenly divided between men who really report that it wasn't much of anything at all and others, the other half, they got pretty darn sick, a really bad flu.  None of them fortunately had to go to the hospital. They all recovered.  This is rather remarkable considering our vulnerable demographic.  It shows that if people are careful and they isolate, they wash their hands, keep their hands off their face, most people aren't going to catch this.  Of course, when I talk to patients, I'm impressed by how much isolation is going on out there, how much care they are taking.  Many men have come to the office and said that I am the first out of the house experience that they've had in 2020.  So people are being very careful and clearly being careful does work.  Liz:  [02:49] Yeah.  I remember early on in the pandemic, our office had way less traffic and was almost empty.  Now it seems like things are picking back up and people are checking back in on their health.  Dr. Scholz:  [03:01] We've had a bunch of people come to the office who maybe had some cold symptoms, everyone's on edge, and we've tested them for the COVID antibody to see if they did indeed have previous exposure.  These tests are almost always coming back negative.  We're told by the scientists that these tests are probably 80% to 90% accurate.  They're not 100% accurate when you do the antibody test.  That's the test to determine if you've had previous exposure to COVID.  We believe, and some people disagree, that if you've had previous exposure and your antibody test is positive, that it's as if you've had a vaccination and you can't catch COVID and you can't transmit it.  That of course would be good news.  We've tested several hundred people now and almo