A Systematic Review of Clinical Practice Guidelines for Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer

Cancer constitutes a huge burden on societies in countries with any level of economic development. Prostate cancer is the first most diagnosed cancer of men in developed countries and the forth one in developing countries in terms of incidence rate. It is also the third incident cancer of men in Iran along with a prevalence of about 10,000 cases. Castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) is a severe stage of the disease with a number of newly discovered treatment options. These therapeutic alternatives including abiraterone acetate, enzalutamide, cabazitaxel, immunotherapy with sipuleucel-T, radiopharmaceuticals and bone-targeted therapies (zoledronic acid, denosumab) along with docetaxel have made the decision making process complex and challenging for clinicians. In addition to the challenges of selecting the best-fit treatment, high costs of new pharmaceuticals and technologies necessitates the health policy-makers to develop practice guidelines in adaptation with local resources and limitations. The aim of this paper is to review the clinical guidelines for the management of CRPC. For better comprehension of guideline recommendations, the main clinical trials on new treatments were also identified. The efficacy and safety outcomes including but not limited to overall survival, progression free survival, quality of life and adverse effects were summarized. The guidelines of American Urological Association (AUA), National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), European Association of Urology (EUA), Spanish Oncology Genitourinary Group (SOGG), Asian Oncology Summit, Saudi Oncology Society-Saudi Urology Association combined guideline, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and Canadian Urological Association-Canadian Urologic Oncology Group (CUA-CUOG) were covered in this paper.