Objective: To evaluate the long-term oncological outcome of radical prostatectomy for patients with high-risk prostate cancer.
Methods: Among 378 patients with prostate cancer who underwent radical prostatectomy at our hospital, 189 had high-risk prostate cancer defined as presenting with at least one of the following high-risk factors: prostate-specific antigen >20 ng/ml, clinical T3 and biopsy Gleason score ≥8.
Results: The median follow-up was 8.1 years. Of all patients, 106 and 61 had one and two high-risk factors, respectively, and the remaining 22 had all three high-risk factors. Pathological examination of the prostatectomy specimens revealed organ-confined disease, specimen-confined disease and lymph node metastasis in 80 (42%), 102 (54%) and 22 (12%), respectively. The 10-year prostate-specific antigen failure-free and local progression-free survival rates were 48.5 and 87.6%, respectively. The 10-year cancer-specific and overall survival rates were 94.1 and 88.7%, respectively. The 10-year prostate-specific antigen failure-free survivals of patients with one, two and all three high-risk factors were 58.5, 39.9 and 22.7%, respectively (P = 0.0001). Of the 106 patients with one high-risk factor only, the high Gleason score group had the best 10-year prostate-specific antigen failure-free survival (69.1%); in particular, that of patients without Gleason grade 5 was 100% (P= 0.032).
Conclusions: Approximately half of patients with high-risk prostate cancer can be cured by radical prostatectomy without any adjuvant treatment. Radical prostatectomy for high-risk prostate cancer provides good long-term local cancer control and cancer-specific survival. In particular, radical prostatectomy for patients with only one high-risk factor can be considered a valuable therapeutic option as the first treatment.