Laurence Klotz, MD, presented “Active Surveillance 2021 – From Bench to Bedside” for the Grand Rounds in Urology audience in February 2021.

How to cite: Klotz, Laurence. “Active Surveillance 2021 – From Bench to Bedside” February 2021. Accessed Dec 2024. https://dev.grandroundsinurology.com/active-surveillance-2021-from-bench-to-bedside/

Active Surveillance 2021 – From Bench to Bedside: Summary

In the first part of a Platinum Lecture trilogy on active surveillance, Laurence Klotz, MD, Professor of Surgery and holder of the Sunnybrook Chair of Prostate Cancer Research at the University of Toronto, discusses the history of active surveillance for prostate cancer as well as current guidance for its implementation. He first notes the major issues in early prostate cancer in the present day, including risk assessment prior to diagnosis, diagnostic evaluation of localized disease, and image-guided partial gland ablation therapy. Dr. Klotz then looks back to early papers suggesting that radical treatment may be unnecessary and ineffective in treating low-risk prostate cancers, remarking on their influence on himself and his colleagues’ 2002 feasibility study on watchful waiting. He reflects on how active surveillance has become widely accepted since that publication, and discusses what urologists have learned regarding patient selection, especially in terms of molecular genetics. Dr. Klotz then compares different studies of active surveillance, focusing on one with broad patient selection criteria and one with conservative selection criteria. The study with broader patient criteria found a raw prostate cancer-specific mortality of 1.5% and an actuarial mortality of 5% at 15 years, while the more conservative study found a prostate cancer-specific mortality of 0.5% at 15 years. Dr. Klotz notes that the 5% actuarial mortality in the first study was determined to be largely the result of the presence of pattern 4 disease at baseline. He also observes that there has been a convergence of selection criteria since those studies came out. Dr. Klotz concludes by discussing current active surveillance protocol, emphasizing the importance of doing a confirmatory biopsy.         

For more on active surveillance for prostate cancer, check out our collection page for the 2020 International Prostate Cancer Update!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laurence Klotz, MD, is the former Chief of Urology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and former President of the Urological Research Society and the Canadian Urological Association. He currently serves as Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto and holds the Sunnybrook Chair of Prostate Cancer Research. Dr. Klotz was the Founding Editor-in-Chief of both the Canadian Journal of Urology and the Canadian Urology Association Journal, and is now Editor Emeritus of the CUAJ. He is the Founder and Chairman of the Canadian Urology Research Consortium (CURC), and is also the Chair of the Global GU Oncology Group.

Dr. Klotz obtained his medical degree from the University of Toronto and completed his residency at the University of Toronto Gallie Program in Surgery. He was a fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York in uro-oncology.

Dr. Klotz is a widely published uro-oncologist with over 350 publications and several books. His main research interest has been prostate cancer. He has served on the boards of many medical/scientific organizations and journals, including the SUO, Prostate Cancer Canada, the journals Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases, Brazilian Journal of Urology, Italian Journal of Urology, and World Journal of Urology.

Dr. Klotz was awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal for meritorious public service in 2012, and the University of Toronto Department of Surgery Lister Prize and the Society of Urologic Oncology Medal in 2013. He received the Harold Warwick Award from the Canadian Cancer Society for ‘outstanding contributions to cancer control’ in 2014. He received the Order of Canada in 2015, and the Richard Williams Award from the AUA in 2016. He received the Dean’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Toronto in 2017.