Table 1.

Studies that assessed the impact of quality of life (QoL) or psychological distress on patients with small renal masses (SRMs) that underwent active surveillance (AS) compared to ablation/surgical therapy.

No.	First Author	Year	Country	Study Design	No. Patients	Age Years	Treatment Option	Questionaires	Results	Follow-Up
1	Goldberg et al.	2020	Canada	single-center retrospective study	477 patients included between 2014 and 2017	56.0 (standard deviation [SD] 10.56) AS 51.9 (SD 11.16) Surgery/ablation	217 active surveillance (AS) and 260 surgery/ablation	Edmonton Symptom Assessment System-revised (ESAS-r)	AS-treated patients with a biopsy-proven malignant tumor had worse psychological distress sub-score (PDSS) compared to patients treated with surgery/ablation after biopsy (11.4 vs. 6.1, p = 0.035), and at last follow-up (13.2 vs. 5.9, p = 0.004).	surgery/ablation group 3.46 years vs. 2.03 years AS group
2	Alam et al.	2019	USA	Multi-left prospective registry	638 patients	61.3 [52.9–67.3] PN, 69.3 [55.3–75.5] RN, 71.8 [62.0–74.8] ablation, 70.6 [63.2–78.2] AS	231 (36.2%) partial nephrectomy (PN), 41 (6.4%) radical nephrectomy (RN), 27 (4.2%) ablation, and 339 (53.1%) AS.	Short Form 12 (SF12) QoL questionnaire at 6 and 12 months, and annually thereafter	QoL was lowest in AS patients due to lower physical health scores, but mental health scores were similar in all groups.	3 years IQR 1.6–5.0
3	Patel et al.	2016	USA	Multi-center prospective registry	539 patients included Between 1 January 2009 and 31 October 2015	62.0 (53.1–68.9) surgery/ablation 70.6 (62.6–78.6) AS	254 AS, 285 surgery/ablation, and 21 AS patients crossed over to delayed intervention.	Short Form 12 (SF12) QoL questionnaire at 6 and 12 months, and annually thereafter	Mental health, which includes domains of depression and anxiety was not adversely affected while on AS and improves over time after selecting a management strategy.	1.8 years IQR 0.3–3.0