The Prostate Unit of the Champalimaud Clinical Centre is organised as a multidisciplinary team which performs a personalised evaluation of each patient and defines the most adequate therapeutic plan among the multiple treatment options adapted to each clinical situation.

This team of prostate cancer specialists includes urologists, medical oncologists, radio-oncologists, radiologists, experts in nuclear medicine, pathologists, geneticists, nutritionists, nurses, psycho-oncologists and palliative care specialists, who together approach the disease’s complexity at its different stages in order to provide the best diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.

Prostate cancer is the most frequent malign tumour and the third cause of cancer deaths in men. In Portugal, it is estimated that 5,000 new cases and 1,800 deaths occur every year. This tumour often presents an indolent growth, which does not compromise patients’ lives or quality of life. However, its most aggressive forms can manifest rapid growth, invading adjacent organs and spreading to lymph nodes and bones.

The risk assessment and early diagnosis programme of prostate cancer at the Champalimaud Clinical Centre aims for the early diagnosis of aggressive tumours at an initial phase, when curative treatments have the highest probability of success, improving patients’ quality of life and reducing their mortality.

The early diagnosis of the disease enables the identification of indolent tumours at low risk for progression and apparently devoid of clinical significance. For these cases, the Champalimaud Clinical Centre has an active monitoring programme, which allows patients to choose to be initially watched, only receiving treatment for curative purposes if the tumour shows signs of becoming aggressive. Depending on the tumour size and progression risk, the decision may be to perform a regular follow-up without any therapeutic intervention or to immediately trigger a multidisciplinary treatment programme.

Our expert team is thus committed to better counselling and adequate patient monitoring, seeking the most adequate solutions for each case. The team of the Prostate and Urinary Tract Unit at the Champalimaud Clinical Centre also treats kidney and bladder tumours.

In the field of stereotactic radiotherapy, the Unit participated in a phase I/II clinical trial, performed at the CCC, which recruited 200 patients and showed the viability and safety of this therapeutic modality. The observed results from this study indicate an excellent control of the tumoral disease, with high degrees of tolerance and very few adverse effects.