Pathologists help determine the eligibility of the patient's prostate cancer for active surveillance -
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the USA. Active monitoring provides patients with low-risk prostate cancer a way to avoid potentially harmful side effects of treatment. Pathologists help determine patient eligibility for active surveillance and today a multi-specialty team published their recommendations for making such determinations in a display of pathology archives and special laboratory medicine online.
With active surveillance, patients undergo regular visits with antigen (PSA) tests specific to prostate and repeated prostate biopsies rather than aggressive treatment. It differs from watchful waiting, in which the treatment of localized disease is retained and the palliative treatment of systemic disease is initiated.
"Active surveillance is an important management option for men with cancer of low risk prostate," says lead author Mahul Amin, MD, FCAP, Chair, Department of Pathology and Medicine laboratory, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA. "Vital to this process is the critical role of pathological parameters play in identifying suitable candidates for active surveillance."
Dr. Amin led the team that identified the key pathologic parameters for the successful identification of patients likely to succeed with active surveillance. Key parameters, at a general level, the address:
• Sampling, submission, and treatment issues in needle biopsies used to diagnose prostate cancer
• tumor extent in biopsies needle
• Biopsy reports for all and special cases
• Gleason score, the system for tissue classification prostate cancer based on how it looks under a microscope
• medicine markers precision
• Other pathological considerations
team also concluded that the key parameters to be reported by pathologists :. 1) must be reproducible and consistently reported and 2) highlight the importance of reporting accurately pathology
Recommendations of Preventive Task Force of the US services, an independent group of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine and randomized trials have pointed to overtreatment of localized, low-risk prostate cancer. PSA screening and the change of consensus on the PSA test practices are among the many factors that contribute to overdiagnosis and overtreatment of prostate cancer
The pathology of recommendations are included in the Article Archives. The crucial role of the pathologist to determine eligibility for Active monitoring as a management option in patients with prostate cancer: consensus statement with recommendations supported by the College of American Pathologists, International Society of Urological Pathology Association directors of Anatomic and surgical pathology, the New Zealand society of pathologists, and the prostate cancer Foundation.
EmoticonEmoticon