Cancer -- Hurry Up and Wait
March 10 2007
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A wait-and-see approach, that avoids the long-term side effects of surgery or radiation, may be more beneficial to some men suffering from prostate cancer.
Many prostate tumors grow so slowly that older men may are likely to die of other causes long before their cancer harms them. They may suffer less from the illness than from surgery and radiation, which can cause pain, incontinence and impotence.
Prostate cancer is diagnosed in nearly 219,000 men each year, and kills about 27,000. However, autopsies have shown that as many as 50 percent of men have undiagnosed "microscopic" prostate cancers.
Some researchers are suggesting a program of "active surveillance" for men with less aggressive tumors. Under such a program, men would not be sent directly to surgery; instead, doctors would conduct regular blood tests and physical exams to gauge whether prostate tumors are growing.
However, many men are uncomfortable with the wait-and-see approach. A study of 1,900 men with prostate cancer showed that in about 16 percent of those cases, or 310 men, the cancer was limited enough to give patients the option of close monitoring of the tumor. However, only 28 patients chose this course of treatment.