Active surveillance: not your father's watchful waiting.

Active surveillance is becoming a very reasonable and appropriate “treatment” strategy for men with low-risk localized prostate cancer, as Large and Eggener eloquently describe in this review article. It is important to recognize that active surveillance is not what was once referred to as “watchful waiting,” which I believe many patients interpret as “watching and waiting to die.” As the name implies, active surveillance is an active approach to prostate cancer (as opposed to the more passive nature of watchful waiting) that includes numerous diagnostic interventions to ensure that the tumor is behaving in a relatively benign manner, minimizing the possibility that the patient will experience adverse clinical outcomes due to prostate cancer.