In an age of advanced technology and personalized medicine, curing prostate cancer is not always necessary, the Association of American Medical Colleges said in a June 25 article.
About 40% of men over 65 have low-grade prostate cancer and very few go on to develop advanced disease. For low-risk prostate cancer like this, treatment options should follow the severity of the disease — starting with active surveillance and shifting to treatment as necessary.
"It's about identifying cancers that have the highest chance of being aggressive, causing symptoms, taking a man’s life," Daniel Spratt, MD, chair of radiation oncology at University Hospitals in Cleveland, said in the article. "We are far more cognizant [than before] about this balance of cure and quality of life. Not all cancer needs to be cured."
Some experts say calling the lowest-risk prostate cancers something else may encourage some patients to follow physicians' treatment recommendations of active surveillance and avoid pursuing more aggressive options, Becker's reported January 25. Some physicians are proposing referring to low-risk prostate cancers as premalignant lesions instead. They said a name other than cancer may help patients have better follow-up in active surveillance. For instance, more than 40% of men who choose active surveillance already have poor follow-up. Some experts worry that calling it something other than cancer would push that rate up even higher.