Penile Cancer: EAU-ASCO Guideline

Dr. Scott Tagawa and Dr. Oscar Brouwer come on the ASCO Guidelines podcast to discuss the new EAU-ASCO Collaborative Guidelines on Penile Cancer. These comprehensive guidelines cover pathological assessment of tumour specimens, diagnosis and staging, local treatment of penile carcinoma, radical inguinal lymph node dissection, prophylactic pelvic lymph node dissection, surgical management, neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy, radiotherapy, systemic and palliative therapies for advanced penile cancer, follow-up, and quality of life. They highlight key recommendations, and describe the importance of a patient-focused and multidisciplinary approach to management of penile cancer.

Find more information about the guidelines at www.asco.org/genitourinary-cancer-guidelines

The full text of the guideline is available at https://uroweb.org/guidelines/penile-cancer

Conflict of interest disclosures:

Guideline Working Group 

Dr. Scott Tagawa 

Dr. Oscar Brouwer

TRANSCRIPT

Brittany Harvey: Hello and welcome to the ASCO Guidelines Podcast, one of ASCO's podcasts delivering timely information to keep you up to date on the latest changes, challenges, and advances in oncology. You can find all the shows, including this one, at asco.org/podcasts. 

My name is Brittany Harvey, and today I'm interviewing Dr. Oscar Brouwer from the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, and Dr. Scott Tagawa from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, co-chairs on the ‘ASCO-EAU Collaborative Guidelines on Penile Cancer’. 

Thank you for being here, Dr. Brouwer and Dr. Tagawa.

Dr. Scott Tagawa: Thanks very much.

Dr. Oscar Brouwer: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Brittany Harvey: Before we discuss this guideline, I'd just like to note that the guideline was led by the European Association of Urology, and the conflict of interest disclosures of the Guideline Working Group are publicly accessible through the European Association of Urology website linked in the show notes. Additionally, Dr. Brouwer's and Dr. Tagawa's individual disclosures are provided in the show notes of this episode. 

So, to jump into the content of this guideline, first, Dr. Tagawa, could you give us a general overview of the purpose and the scope of this collaborative EAU-ASCO Guideline?

Dr. Scott Tagawa: So, I think the key word there is collaborative. This was truly a collaborative effort, and I say that in a number of ways. So, the two key organizations, the EAU and ASCO, came together with a Memorandum of Understanding and got together from the very beginning in terms of developing the scope and then throughout the methodology for the guidelines. And then, on a practical basis, I'd say even more importantly, a collaboration between multiple physicians of different disciplines from across the world. Whether we're talking about surgeons, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, pathologists, we had panel members from all over the world as well as patient representatives from all over the world. And patient representatives really played a key role in the development of this guideline. 

By way of background, penile cancer in most places is considered a rare disease. For example, in the United States, we expect around 2000 cases per year. In the genitourinary world, the next rare cancer is going to be testis cancer, which is going to be four or five times higher than that per year and nowhere near prostate cancer, for instance. So, just kind of put that into perspective. But, importantly, a disease that is a worldwide issue in a num