OK To Watch Low-Grade Prostate Cancer

The answer to the question –What to do about prostate cancer? Watch it? Treat it? Pretend you don’t have it? –gets a little easier after seeing the results of a new study that followed 1,643 patients in Britain ages 50 to 69 who had early prostate cancers.  The New York Times reports that after ten years, there was no difference in death rates between men who were picked at random to have surgery or radiation, or to rely on “active monitoring,” with treatment only if it progressed. The overall death rate overall was only about 1 percent of patients 10 years after diagnosis. Sounds like great news, but on closer examination, it’s probably only pretty good news: about half the patients in the study who had started out being monitored wound up having surgery or radiation, and cancer was more likely to progress and spread in the men who opted for monitoring rather than for early treatment. And ten years is not forever. The patients are still being monitored, and overall death rates could change. For the time being though, it looks like monitoring is a very safe choice for people with low-grade cancer.