Physicians Urged to Consider Active Surveillance in Prostate Cancer

The updated NCCN (National Comprehensive Cancer Network) guidelines “…urge clinicians to offer active surveillance to their patients whose prostate cancers are at low risk of progressing to life-threatening disease”.
This is an old article from the National Cancer Institute which I believe it should be read by the newbies who were diagnosed with prostate cancer and are worried about treatments.

The Guidelines added a new category in the classification of patients as “very-low risk or clinically insignificant prostate cancer”. Patients with a life expectancy of up to 20 years and that fall into the very-low risk category, the guidelines recommend physicians to advise only active surveillance as the preferred management approach”.

The parameters for AS includes the majority of newly diagnosed patients in present days due to earlier prevention protocols. These are the required status:
(1) Tumor stage: T1-T2a
(2) Tumor grade: Gleason score ≤6
(3) PSA level < 10 ng/mL
(4) < 3 positive biopsy cores, ≤ 50% cancer in each core

I would recommend to the many to read this article.
http://www.cancer.gov/aboutnci/ncicancerbulletin/archive/2010/011210/page2

VGama