SAN DIEGO—Active surveillance (AS) is a reasonable management strategy for appropriately selected patients with low-risk prostate cancer (PCa), but a significant percentage of patients will experience disease progression if they live beyond 10 years from their diagnosis, long-term data presented at the American Urological Association annual meeting suggest.
In a retrospective study, David Buethe, MD, and colleagues at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., identified 114 PCa patients placed on AS from November 1997 to November 2000. Of these, 96 met study inclusion criteria, including a Gleason score less than 7 and less than 50% involvement of any single biopsy core. At diagnosis, patients had a mean age of 70 years and a mean PSA value of 8.2 ng/mL.
At a median follow-up of 134.8 months, 52 patients (54%) had been reclassified or showed disease progression. The cohort had a median progression-free and overall survival of 68.7 months and 156.9 months, respectively. Only one PCa-specific death occurred. Treatment at the time of disease progression did not improve survival, according to the investigators.
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