Advances in prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is a common tumour type in Australian men.

The aim of this article is to review important changes in prostate cancer diagnosis and management over the past five years, particularly as they pertain to general practice.

The management of prostate cancer has changed significantly in recent years, particularly the use of imaging, with the introduction of prostate magnetic resonance imaging as routine in the diagnostic pathway, and the increasing use of prostate-specific membrane antigen positron emission tomography for early stratification in the salvage setting for failure of primary treatment in localised disease. In addition, upfront combinations of androgen deprivation therapy with other systemic treatments have yielded significant gains in overall survival for patients with metastatic disease. There has also been an increasing recognition of the association between germline DNA repair defects and progressive disease, and interest in the potential to identify patients for therapies that target these defects. There have been significant changes in how prostate cancer is diagnosed and managed in the past five years, with the introduction of new clinical pathways that were unprecedented just a decade previously.