Prostate Cancer: Study Says Watch It, Don’t Treat It

The good news is that a new study conducted at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston strongly suggests that low-risk, localized prostate cancers can safely be treated with active surveillance or “watchful waiting” instead of surgery, which almost always has unpleasant side effects. The bad news is: it’s still hard to tell low-risk from high-risk prostate cancer. That inability to distinguish the not-so bad from the very bad leads us to the current dilemma, in which “70 percent of men in this country have low-risk prostate cancer, and it’s estimated that 60 percent of them are treated unnecessarily,” according to researcher Julia Hayes. A Dana-Farber news release reports that in active surveillance, patients have blood tests for prostate specific antigen (PSA) every three months, rectal examinations every six months, and a prostate gland biopsy at one year and then every three years. If the tests find the cancer is more aggressive than originally thought, the patients begin treatment aimed at curing the disease. Read more about the study here.