“Patient preferences, treatment goals, and the option for proceeding with a watchful waiting approach should be discussed as part of personalized shared decision-making,” wrote Marieke van Winden, MD, MSc, of Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and colleagues. “In patients with a limited life expectancy and asymptomatic low-risk tumors, the time to benefit from treatment might exceed life expectancy, and watchful waiting should be discussed as a potentially appropriate approach.”
As little research has been undertaken on watchful waiting in patients with BCC, the expected tumor growth, progression and the chance of developing symptoms while taking this approach are poorly understood. Patients with limited life expectancy might not live long enough to develop BCC symptoms and may benefit more from watchful waiting than active treatment, authors of the study wrote.
This observational cohort study evaluated the reasons for watchful waiting, along with the natural course of 280 BCCs in 89 patients (53% men, median age 83 years) who chose this approach. Patients had one or more untreated BCCs for at least 3 months and the median follow-up was 9 months. The researchers also looked at the reasons for initiating later treatment.
Patient-related factors, including limited life expectancy, comorbidity prioritizations, and frailty, were the most important reasons to choose watchful waiting in 83% of patients, followed by tumor-related factors in 55% of patients. Of the tumors, 47% increased in size. The estimated tumor diameter increase in 1 year was 4.46 mm for infiltrative/micronodular BCCs and 1.06 mm for nodular, superficial, or clinical BCCs. Tumor growth was not associated with initial tumor size and location.
The most common reasons to initiate active treatment were tumor burden, resolved reasons for watchful waiting, and reevaluation of patient-related factors.
“All patients should be followed up regularly to determine whether a watchful waiting approach is still suited and if patients still prefer watchful waiting to reconsider the consequences of refraining from treatment,” the authors wrote.
In an accompanying editorial, Mackenzie R. Wehner, MD, MPhil, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said that, while the observational and retrospective design was a limitation of the study, this allowed the authors to observe patients avoiding or delaying treatment for BCC in real clinical practice.
The study “shows that few patients developed new symptoms, and few patients who decided to treat after a delay had more invasive interventions than originally anticipated, an encouraging result as we continue to study the option and hone the details of active surveillance in BCC,” Dr. Wehner wrote. “It is important to note that the authors did not perform actual active surveillance. This study did not prospectively enroll patients and see them in follow-up at set times, nor did it have prespecified end points for recommending treatment.”
“Before evidence-based active surveillance in BCC can become a viable option, prospective studies of active surveillance, with specified follow-up times and clear outcome measures, are needed,” Dr. Wehner wrote.
Dr. van Winden did not report any conflicts of interest.