What is "significant" prostate cancer?

What is “significant” prostate cancer? Genetic research has concluded that cancers, found in the prostate, are not all life-threatening. The life-threatening cancers are referred to as “significant” cancer and do require treatment.

The ability to differentiate the aggressive, significant cancer from non-aggressive cancer opens up more treatment options including focal ablative therapy. Ablative therapy can treat the entire prostate or just the area(s) with the aggressive cancer cells. If treatment is directed only to the aggressive cells it is referred to as focal therapy. Focal therapy eliminates the aggressive cells without destroying the rest of the prostate. This minimizes the potential for sexual dysfunction and urinary incontinence.

 Focal prostate treatment is similar to the advancing technology for breast cancer. Today lumpectomy has largely replaced the radical mastectomy. Another way of thinking about focal treatment is to consider an apple with a bad spot. Rather than tossing the whole apple, only the bad spot is removed.