Active Surveillance Is Becoming More Common for Men with Low-Risk Prostate Cancer

U.S. guidelines began encouraging more conservative management of low-risk prostate cancer in 2010. To explore treatment patterns for men with prostate cancer of all grades, researchers used a U.S. database that included records from 2010 to 2015 for almost 165,000 men with low-, intermediate-, or high-risk prostate cancer. Patients were categorized as receiving active surveillance or watchful waiting (AS/WW), radical prostatectomy, or any type of radiotherapy.

For men with low-risk disease, a significant increase was noted in AS/WW (15% in 2010 to 42% in 2015), and significant decreases were found for radical prostatectomy (47% to 31%) and radiotherapy (38% to 27%). For men with high-risk disease, researchers found a small but significant i…