Prostate cancer testing has received significant attention lately as the industry seeks to find reliable ways of identifying the appropriate treatment strategy for patients diagnosed with such cancer. A new draft local coverage determination (LCD) proposed by Medicare Administrative Contractor Palmetto GBA notes that “[i]n 2014, nearly 233,000 men in the US will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, which accounts for 14% of all new cancers.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that prostate cancer is “the most common cancer among American men” and “one of the leading causes of cancer death among men of all races.” The draft LCD recognizes the potential for genetic testing to help get the most appropriate treatment for these patients. As the CDC notes, some prostate cancers are slow growing and don’t cause health problems. Therefore, not all patients diagnosed with prostate cancer require aggressive treatment but it is difficult for treating providers to determine which patients have an aggressive form of the cancer and which do not. Recognizing this difficulty, Palmetto is proposing a LCD for an assay that measures cancer aggressiveness. The Oncotype DX® Prostate Cancer Assay is described in the LCD as a “prostate biopsy-based 17-gene RT-PCR assay,…
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