Watchful waiting is a term used to describe a period during which a patient is closely monitored by his doctor, but no specific medical treatment is given until the patient develops symptoms or his symptoms change.
Watchful waiting may be considered, for example, if an individual is found to have a solitary pulmonary nodule on a CT scan of the chest that is unlikely to be cancerous.
While watchful waiting is discussed often with prostate cancer, it is considered less frequently with lung cancer, especially with early stage lung cancers that have the potential to be cured by surgery and have a low survival rate if left untreated. Watchful waiting may at times be considered if a lung cancer is not likely to be cured by surgery, and immediate treatment is likely to cause more symptoms or discomfort than the cancer itself.
