Predicting prostate recurrence ineffective

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- There is no link between localized prostate cancer's clinical stage and a patient's risk of cancer recurrence after prostate removal, U.S. researchers say.

The findings, published online ahead of the print edition of the journal Cancer, challenge the current system that determines the extent or severity of prostate cancer that has not metastasized.

Dr. Adam Reese of the University of California, San Francisco, says one of the primary purposes of staging prostate cancers is to help physicians determine a patient's prognosis. For example, a more advanced clinical stage should indicate a higher risk of cancer recurrence after treatment, but the researchers found that clinical stage is of questionable utility for predicting disease recurrence after surgical removal of the prostate -- radical prostatectomy -- in patients with localized prostate cancer.

In a study involving 3,875 men, the researchers found that clinical stage was assigned incorrectly in 35.4 percent of the cases. The majority of these staging errors occurred because physicians frequently disregarded the results of transrectal ultrasound tests and incorrectly incorporated biopsy results when assigning stage, Reese says.

However, even after correcting these staging errors, there was no association between clinical stage and prostate cancer recurrence after radical prostatectomy, the study says.

"Our findings question the utility of our current staging system for localized prostate cancer," Reese adds.