Since ProtecT’s favourable results in 2016, the number of men who are potentially overtreated has continued to decline

Catherine Winsor, Deputy Director of Support and Influencing at Prostate Cancer UK, discussed the current state of affairs for active surveillance in the UK at the BAUS 2018 Annual Scientific Meeting.

The 2018 National Prostate Cancer Audit [2] found that in 2016–17, only 4% of men with low-risk* localised prostate cancer underwent radical treatment
and were potentially overtreated.

This overtreatment rate had halved compared with that of the previous year, reducing the number of men suffering the potential side effects of radical treatment.

∗ In the National Prostate Cancer Audit, cancers were classified as low-risk if they were tumour stage T1 and Gleason grade ≤6.

BAUS, British Association of Urological Surgeons.

References:

1. Hamdy FC et al. N Engl J Med 2016; 375: 1415–1424.
2. The Royal College of Surgeons of England. National Prostate Cancer Audit: Annual Report 2018. RCS, 2018. www.npca.org.uk/content/uploads/2019/02/NPCA-Annual-Report-2018.pdf (last accessed 21/3/2019)