Study Type--Therapy (outcomes) Level of Evidence 2b. What's known on the subject? and What does the study add? Active surveillance aims to reduce overtreatment by selecting patients with low risk prostate cancer (PCa) based on favourable disease characteristics. However, most studies on active surveillance do not have long-term results available; in particular, data on patients with intermediate risk disease are lacking. Our findings demonstrate that withholding radical treatment in men with low or intermediate risk screen-detected localized PCa leads to a substantial delay or even avoidance of radical treatment in a majority of men. Favourable disease-specific outcomes confirm the feasibility of active surveillance for low risk PCa and also support a role for active surveillance in selected patients with intermediate risk PCa.
â?¢ To assess the longer-term feasibility of active surveillance, we aimed to evaluate outcomes of patients with screen-detected localized prostate cancer (PCa) who initially elected to withhold radical treatment for either low or intermediate risk disease.
â?¢ All men underwent screening for PCa in the Rotterdam and Helsinki arms of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC); eligible men were diagnosed with PCa prior to the establishment of the ERSPC-affiliated Prostate Cancer Research International: Active Surveillance (PRIAS) study (1994-2007) and were initially expectantly managed in the absence of a fixed follow-up protocol. â?¢ Low risk PCa was defined as clinical stage T1/T2, PSA = 10 ng/mL, PSA density