Current prostate cancer risk stratification tools, such as active surveillance and watchful waiting, are commonly used to determine treatment plans in patients with low-risk prostate cancer but have not yet fully been studied in patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer.
Active surveillance amounts to delaying or avoiding radical treatment while monitoring the patient with prostate examinations, PSA blood tests at approximately six-month intervals, and performing surveillance prostate biopsies or MRI scans at 1 to two-year intervals.
Surveillance testing intervals may be lengthened after previous checks have shown no evidence of progression over several years, and, as the patient's natural life expectancy decreases with time, 'active surveillance with curative intent' often transitions to 'watchful waiting'.
Therefore, better methods of predicting the potential aggressiveness of prostate cancer in patients are urgently needed, according to Catalona.
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