Smilow Comprehensive Prostate Cancer Center

When you’ve been diagnosed with prostate cancer, we understand that you have many decisions to make: which type of treatment should you choose? How aggressive should the treatment be? And whom should you trust with your care?

At NYU Langone’s Smilow Comprehensive Prostate Cancer Center, part of NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, we use personalized care coupled with evidenced-based medicine to identify which patients can benefit from aggressive treatment and those who can safely pursue a more conservative approach.

Our excellence in surgery, treatment outcomes, and imaging has made us one of the leading prostate cancer care centers in the country. Our nerve-sparing surgery techniques have revolutionized prostate cancer care and ended the days when men had to choose between fighting cancer and preserving their sexual function.

We offer the most up-to-date programs in prostate cancer screening and detection, which allows us to accurately assess your cancer risk and guide treatment recommendations. Our radiologists and urologists pioneered the use of MRI to identify areas of potentially aggressive disease so we can target biopsies. In addition, we are continually researching ways to improve prostate cancer screening and detection.

We do all this while putting you first. We get to know you, and in doing so, we create the best treatment plan to fit your medical condition, while addressing your quality-of-life concerns.

Treatment Options for Prostate Cancer

We don’t stop after embarking on a treatment plan. For many men with low-risk disease, active surveillance or observation is the most appropriate option. At the Smilow Comprehensive Prostate Cancer Center, we have carefully and safely followed men for more than a decade without any intervention, while ensuring the disease was not progressing.

Men who are candidates for a treatment called focal ablation recover quickly and typically do not develop urinary incontinence or sexual dysfunction. A requirement of this treatment is careful follow up to ensure that the cancer has truly been destroyed and new cancers do not develop in the untreated prostate.

If you choose to have your prostate removed in a procedure known as radical prostatectomy, we follow you closely through recovery and connect you with programs that improve your chances of maintaining sexual potency and avoiding incontinence. Radiation therapy delivered with exquisite precision—such as with stereotactic radiosurgery (using CyberKnife or MR-LINAC targeted radiotherapy) or brachytherapy—is also a highly effective approach for eradication of the cancer while at the same time associated with low risks of urinary leakage and higher chances of preserving sexual function.

Our team of world-renowned urologic surgeons, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, radiologists, and naturopathic doctors collaborate to provide comprehensive prostate cancer care. We are intimately familiar with the most up-to-date medical findings, and in many cases we are leading those discoveries right here at NYU Langone.

We also offer holistic programs that include nutritional support, mind–body counseling, and acupuncture. These naturopathic approaches may help prevent cancer in men at high risk for prostate cancer, reduce the side effects of some prostate cancer treatments, and slow disease progression. These programs are available from naturopathic doctor Geo Espinosa, director of integrative urology at NYU Langone.

The Smilow Comprehensive Prostate Cancer Center was established in 2010 with the generous support of Joel E. Smilow, a trustee of New York University and NYU Langone.