We’re launching a new blog series to help provide some direction to the decision making process that typically follows a cancer diagnosis.
To kick off the series, we sat down with Dr. Jim Hu, one of our internationally-renowned urologists, to determine some of the factors that should go into the decision to pursue active surveillance as a prostate cancer treatment approach.
A cancer diagnosis typically involves much more than just detecting the presence of cancer in the body. Additional information about the nature of the cancer and where it started and may have spread helps physicians recommend the best course of treatment, especially since depending on cancer type (very low, low, intermediate or high risk), there can be a wide ranging degree of aggressiveness.
For most types of cancers, there are different standards used to “grade” or assess this aggressiveness on a common scale. Usually this information is then used in conjunction with information about whether the cancer has already spread or metastasized to other parts of the body. It can also be used alongside other genetic and molecular information about the cancer that tells us whether this specific cancer is likely to respond to a certain treatment and the rate at which the cancer is likely to spread.
For a long time, prostate cancer has been known as an “indolent” or slow-growing cancer relative to other cancers such as pancreatic or lung cancers. The aggressiveness or rate at which it is likely to grow is measured by studying the appearance of the cancer cells under a microscope to determine the grade. For prostate cancers, we refer to this as the Gleason score. The lowest prostate cancer grade is currently Gleason 3+3=6. Grade 6 prostate cancer is thought to be non-aggressive and unlikely to spread to other places in the body.
However, there are cases when more aggressive cancer may have been hidden and then subsequently discovered. The challenge is that in 75% of cases, prostate cancer is multi-focal, meaning that it grows within several areas of the prostate. This makes it difficult to accurately stage the tumor entirely, as only one section of the cancer is being analyzed to determine its aggressiveness. As a result, the decision to pursue active surveillance or careful monitoring and watching in patients with low-grade tumors on the Gleason scale depends on several factors. These factors include a man’s overall health, life expectancy, the age of diagnosis, and personality type.
The rationale for this approach is that low-risk prostate cancer grows very slowly and some question whether it ever spreads. Therefore the majority of these cancers may not be life threatening within a 10 year time frame, so men can avoid prostate cancer therapies that may affect quality of life. For this group, active surveillance is an alternative to the over-treatment of prostate cancer and potential side effects that can come along with it For example, in men who have numerous medical conditions and a shorter life expectancy, active surveillance is a reasonable treatment option, even with Gleason 3+4=7 prostate cancer, or intermediate risk disease.
With active surveillance, it is important to be monitored regularly by a urologist who will test your PSA levels and perform digital rectal examinations of the prostate. Imaging with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and targeted biopsy of suspicious areas should also be part of the routine to accurately assess prostate cancer severity.
Targeted biopsies use ultrasound fused to the MRI to guide the procedure, greatly increasing the accuracy and likelihood that the tissue sample is of the most suspicious section of the prostate. A guided biopsy takes approximately 10 minutes and carries a small risk of infection or bleeding (like a standard biopsy). Many academic medical centers, including Weill Cornell Medicine/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital offer targeted biopsies, but many community practices do not. Additionally, there is a learning curve to the procedure, so the experience of the urologist is critical.
There are also biomarkers that have recently been developed to evaluate the need for a prostate biopsy. These include the 4K test and Prostate Health Index (PHI), which are blood tests that assess the likelihood that prostate cancer may be contributing to a rise in PSA level.
Additionally, for men diagnosed with low risk prostate cancer, there are new tests that assess the genetics of the tissue to determine whether more aggressive disease may have been missed on the biopsy, and present in other parts of the prostate. These assays are called Oncotype Dx, Decipher and Polaris.
We offer all of these tests at Weill Cornell and NewYork-Presbyterian, and together they paint a much more complete picture of the prostate cancer and whether it is progressing. This comprehensive, big picture is what we use to make recommendations for your overall course of prostate cancer treatment, including whether it would be a good idea to pursue active surveillance.
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