Implementation of PSA-based Active Surveillance in Prostate Cancer

Abstract

Prostate cancer screening had led to the diagnosis of a large proportion of localized and low-risk disease. Many of these cancer cases are believed to be indolent and would not be clinically perceived in the absence of screening. In addition to that, the wide use of active treatment has exposed these patients to treatment-related quality-of-life impact. In this setting active surveillance as a way of deferring active treatment and reserving such treatment to cases of disease progression only has gained interest. PSA has been widely used to identify patients eligible for active surveillance and also for disease monitoring. The goal of this review was to describe the place of PSA in the monitoring of patients under active surveillance based on the existing studies and to discuss the importance of PSA in light of other existing or emerging tools to monitor prostate cancer in active surveillance.

Keywords::

• active surveillance
• biomarkers
• disease monitoring
• prostate cancer
• PSA

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.