MOST men diagnosed with prostate cancer can still opt not to have or delay their treatment without endangering their survival, a long-term study from the New England Journal of Medicine revealed.

In a report, the active monitoring of localized prostate cancer has been shown by researchers to be a safe alternative to immediate surgery or radiation treatment.

The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test was administered to 82,429 males in the United Kingdom between the years 1999 and 2009. These men ranged from 50 to 69 years old. 

There were 2664 males who were diagnosed with a localized form of prostate cancer. Some 1643 of these men took part in an experiment to determine the efficacy of various therapies. Among these men, 545 were given the option to receive active monitoring, 553 were assigned to have a prostatectomy, and 545 were selected to get radiation therapy, it said.

“After 15 years of follow-up, prostate cancer–specific mortality was low regardless of the treatment assigned. Thus, the choice of therapy involves weighing trade-offs between benefits and harms associated with treatments for localized prostate cancer,” the study said.

Don’t panic

“The good news is that if you’re diagnosed with prostate cancer, don’t panic, and take your time to make a decision,” lead study author Dr. Freddie Hamdy, professor of surgery and urology at the University of Oxford, said in a US media report.

According to the same report, the findings do not apply to males who have prostate cancers that are determined to be high-risk and high-grade by the use of diagnostic tests. According to Hamdy, early treatment is still necessary for aggressive tumors like these, which account for around 15 percent of all prostate cancer diagnoses.

The study said that the death rate from prostate cancer was 3.1 percent in the group that was monitored actively, 2.2 percent in the group that underwent surgery, and 2.9 percent in the group that was treated with radiation; the differences between these three groups were not highly relevant. 

At 15 years, prostate cancer had spread to 9.4 percent of the patients whose treatment consisted of active monitoring, 4.7 percent of the patients whose treatment consisted of surgery, and 5 percent of the patients whose treatment consisted of radiation. 

“In the active-monitoring group, 133 men (24.4 percent) were alive without any prostate cancer treatment at the end of follow-up,” it said.

Incidence, mortality rate

In the Philippines, the World Health Organization reported that prostate cancer is the third leading cause of cancer among Filipino males, with 12.3 percent or 8,242 new cases in 2020.

Meanwhile, prostate cancer is the ninth leading cause of cancer deaths among Filipino men, the report noted.