March 1, 1986The Journal of Urology
The Prognostic Significance of Post-Irradiation Biopsy Results in Patients with Prostatic Cancer
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Implication
Retrospective cohort study reveals increased recurrence risk after positive post-radiotherapy prostate biopsy, indicating its value in predicting treatment failure.
Key Points
- To determine the prognostic significance of routine post-irradiation prostate biopsy findings in men treated with radiotherapy for prostate cancer.
- Retrospective review of 803 prostate cancer patients treated with pelvic lymph node dissection, radioactive gold seed implantation, and external beam radiotherapy.
- Analysis focused on 124 patients who underwent at least one post-treatment prostate biopsy 6 to 36 months post-radiotherapy while having no clinical evidence of disease recurrence (mean follow-up: 64 months, range 14–175 months).
- Positive post-irradiation biopsies were observed in 35% of patients (43/124), correlating with higher initial tumor stage (22% in stage B1N vs 50% in stage C1) but not histological grade.
- Local recurrence and distant metastasis rates were significantly higher in biopsy-positive patients (p = 0.0006).
- Cumulative 5- and 10-year local recurrence rates were 58% and 82% for biopsy-positive patients versus 18% and 32% for biopsy-negative patients, maintaining prognostic value even in node-negative cases.
Cite This Study
Scardino et al. (1986) studied this question.