No Treatment

This option consists merely of close observation of the cancer, looking for any signs of progression with blood tests, scans and physical examinations. Specific cancer treatment will be undertaken only when problems arise from the cancer growth. While this approach may seem out of the question in most cases, withholding treatment is appropriate and justifiable in certain circumstances The treatments might be more risky than the disease. For instance, a elderly male (in his 80's?) with localized cancer, and with no symptoms, might be better left alone. In the absence of symptoms, and in the presence of other medical situations which are more threatening, observation is correct.

In some medical environments, Sweden, for example, no treatment or observation has become a fairly standard approach to early prostate cancer. They believe that in some patients, the disease will grow so slowly that radical treatment is unneeded because patients will die of other diseases. In patients whose prostate cancers grow quickly, they feel comfortable in treating the spread with medical treatment, non curative. For the most part, this approach goes against the attitudes of most American cancer specialists. Still, observation has many supporters and must be considered in certain situations.