Prostate cancer unit initiative in europe: a consensus on standards of care

Comprehensive multidisciplinary management of prostate cancer (PC) optimizes patients' access to care, rehabilitation and counseling delivered by a team of qualified experts. This is in line with the need for a paradigm shift from a disease-focused to a patient-centered approach underlined also by the European Partnership for Action Against Cancer. The concept of specialised interdisciplinary and multiprofessional PC care to be formalized in Prostate Cancer Units (PCU) was developed by the Prostate Cancer Programme of the European School of Oncology. The first step was the publication in 2011 of the collaborative article “The Requirements of a Specialist Prostate Cancer Unit: A Discussion Paper From the European School of Oncology”. It was followed by the launch of the PCU Initiative in Europein 2012 in which internationally recognized opinion leaders, among whom representatives of scientific societies, and patient advocates were invited to set standards for quality comprehensive care in PCUs.