How Widely Is Active Surveillance Being Used for Low-Risk Prostate Cancer?

The increasing use of active surveillance — instead of immediate surgery or radiotherapy — for low-risk prostate cancer is one reason that some skeptics about prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening have become more open to screening. In this study, researchers used data from a U.S. urology patient registry, which includes nearly 2000 urologists in 349 practices, to examine how frequently patients are managed with active surveillance.

Between 2014 and 2021, these urologists treated nearly 21,000 men with low-risk prostate cancer (defined as PSA <10 ng/mL, grade group 1, and clinical stage T1/T2a). The proportion of low-risk cases managed with active surveillance (rather than surgery or radiotherapy) doubled between 2014 and 2021 — from 27%…