Prostate Cancer: To Treat or Not to Treat

After a prostate cancer diagnosis, urologists do not always initiate immediate clinical intervention. In those with low-risk prostate cancer, a “wait and see” approach is usually recommended — a strategy known as active surveillance. During this post-diagnostic monitoring period, the patient’s health care team keeps a close eye on their condition via regular testing. However, exactly which patients should go down the active surveillance track remains a grey zone.

Mieke Van Hemelrijck from King’s College London is a lead researcher and part of the GAP3 consortium, the world’s biggest active surveillance prostate cancer database. Van Hemelrijck and colleagues have recently developed a tool to gauge risk levels in prostate cancer patients, allowing them to make data-driven medical decisions.

“Current methods of deciding whether or not to recommend treatment are not reliable,” said Van Hemelrijck.

“Our analysis shows that we should be able to produce a single global methodology, which will give accurate estimates of how aggressive these cancers are. These will feed directly into the treatment decision, and give men the reassurance they need to decide on treatment”. The work was presented at the virtual European Association of Urology Congress.