Safe Prostate Cancer Treatment: Watch and Wait
According to a new study about Safe Prostate Cancer Treatment, actively monitoring early-stage prostate cancer had a similar long-term survival percentage to undergoing surgery or radiation therapy. Many men will be able to avoid the option’s negative effects, which include impair sexual, gastrointestinal, and urine function.
Lead researcher Freddie Hamdy, MD, a professor of surgery and urology at the University of Oxford in England, said in a statement: “It is clear that, unlike many other cancers, a diagnosis of prostate cancer should not be a cause for panic or rushed decision making.” “In the knowledge that this will not adversely affect their survival,” says a clinician, “patients and clinicians can and should take their time to weigh up the benefits and potential harms of different treatments.”
The findings were presented at a meeting of the European Association of Urology on Saturday and were later published in the New England Journal of Medicine. More than 1,600 British males participated in the trial, which tested three alternative therapy modalities. Between 1999 and 2009, these guys had brand-new localized prostate cancer diagnoses. The males underwent radiation therapy, underwent partial or complete surgical excision of the prostate gland, or underwent ongoing laboratory blood testing for active monitoring. Ages of the men ranged from 50 to 69, and 62 was the median age upon diagnosis. After being diagnosed, they were followed for 15 years.
Prostate cancer claimed the lives of 3% of the men in the study overall, and the percentage was the same whether
Compared to the men in the other two treatment groups, men who got active monitoring had a twice-as-high risk of their cancer spreading. The monitoring group nonetheless shared the same 97% 15-year survival rate as the two therapy groups. About one-fourth of the males in the monitoring group had not undergone any invasive therapy at the conclusion of the 15-year follow-up period.
It will surprise and inspire urologists and patients, according to Peter Albers, MD, chair of the EAU’s Scientific Congress Office and a urologist at Düsseldorf University in Germany, that the greater disease progression seen under active monitoring did not result in higher mortality. “Active monitoring and biopsy methods are far more sophisticated now than they were when this research was completed, so it is possible that we might further enhance these results. The idea that postponing therapy is safe is crucial information for patients, especially considering that doing so also implies postponing adverse effects.
