A patient who had done well for 10 years after extensive abdominal surgery for malignant disease of the stomach began to show symptoms of metastases, especially to the bones. Laboratory studies of the serum revealed abnormally high levels for alkaline phosphatase, total acid phosphatase, and specific prostatic acid phosphatase, but postmortem examination of the prostate yielded neither gross nor microscopic evidence of prostatic carcinoma. Abnormally high phosphatase levels do not suffice for the diagnosis of prostatic carcinoma.
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Howard B. Simon (1959) studied this question.
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