Watchful Waiting

Watchful waiting, also called watch and wait or expectant management, is a medical approach in which time is allowed to pass, with repeated testing to monitor a condition, before intervention or therapy is used. In oncology it is often called active surveillance, particularly for prostate cancer, and is especially useful when diagnostic certainty is limited or the potential harms of immediate treatment may exceed the benefits of acting right away. For prostate cancer specifically, watchful waiting allows monitoring over months or years before pursuing surgery or drug treatment, letting many patients avoid procedures they may never need while physicians use explicit protocols to identify the point at which observation should give way to active treatment.