Multidisciplinary management of Prostate Cancer: how and why.

BACKGROUND A Prostate Cancer Unit is a place where men can be cared for by specialists in prostate cancer (PC), working together within a multi-disciplinary team (MDT). The MDT approach guarantees a higher probability for the PC patient to receive adequate information on the disease and on all possible therapeutic strategies, balancing advantages and related side effects. Objecive: To analyze the role of a MDT in PC management and to compare some results in terms of characteristics and distribution of PC cases, obtained by a MDT, with those reported by a monodisciplinary urological unit. Outcome measurements and results: A high percentage of cases (47.6%) referred to our MDT were in the low risk group. In the Prostate cancer Unit the indications for primary therapies were more equally distributed between surgery (51.5%) and radiotherapy (45.4%). CONCLUSIONS The future of PC patients relies in a successful multidisciplinary collaboration between experienced physicians which can led to important advantages in all the phases of PC.