Watchful Waiting

It is generally agreed that prostate cancer is a progressive, but slow-growing disease. It usually takes many years to determine with confidence whether prostate cancer has been cured by aggressive treatment. Therefore, following treatment patients are monitored with periodic checkups and PSA tests for progression of the disease. These periods between aggressive treatments are known as watchful waiting. Watchful waiting allows the patient and his doctor to watch for progression and make decisions about more aggressive treatment if need for such treatments is indicated by a PSA that rises too rapidly or symptoms appear.

Most men with prostate cancer die of other causes before they ever experience symptoms of the disease.

Recent studies indicate that patients of prostate cancer may do about as well in terms of survival by choosing watchful waiting instead of radical prostatectomy, or external beam radiation, the standard treatments. So a question has been raised as to when or if aggressive treatment is necessary. Watchful waiting is gaining acknowledgment as a viable first line treatment in some cases of prostate cancer, particularly when the Gleason Score is low or the patient is elderly or in otherwise poor health. 

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