ABSTRACT
The current philosophy of ‘fi rst do no harm’ in the management of localized prostate cancer has resulted in a plethora of non-invasive or minimally invasive techniques which now rival radical prostatectomy. It has been suggested that in screen-detected, low-grade prostate cancer for individuals between 55 and 74 years of age, the disease-related death rate over a 15-year period is 1% and the benefi t from radical intervention less than 1%.1 We should therefore be offering the procedure only to specifi c at-risk groups and endeavor to achieve a complication rate of less than 1%.
