Heterogeneous oncologic outcomes according to surgical pathology in high-risk prostate cancer: implications for better risk stratification and preoperative prediction of oncologic outcomes.

PURPOSE

To evaluate the better risk stratification based on surgical pathology, and to predict oncologic outcomes after radical prostatectomy (RP) with a better scoring system in high-risk prostate cancer (PCa) patients.

METHODS

We evaluated high-risk PCa patients (PSA >20 ng/ml, ≥cT3a, or Gleason score 8-10) who underwent RP between 2007 and 2013 at our institute. We classified patients into three groups according to their pathologic outcomes: favorable (pT2, Gleason score ≤7, and node negative), intermediate (specimen-confined disease (pT2-3a, node negative PCa with negative surgical margins) but not in the favorable group), and unfavorable (the remaining patients). We developed a risk stratification scoring system to predict prognostic outcomes after RP and validated our scoring system to estimate its predictive accuracy.

RESULTS

Among a total of 356 patients, 95 (26.7%), 115 (32.3%), and 146 (41%) were in the favorable, intermediate, and unfavorable prognostic groups, respectively. The 5-year biochemical recurrence-free survival rates of the patients in each group were 87.8, 64.6, and 41.4%, respectively. We developed a scoring system based on preoperative PSA, clinical stage, percentage of tumor positive core, and percentage of cores with a Gleason score 8-10. This demonstrated internally and externally validated concordance indices of 0.733 and 0.772, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Using our scoring system, we can predict which patients with high-risk PCa would benefit more from RP. Thus, this system can be used in patient counseling to determine an optimal treatment strategy for high-risk PCa.