Introduction: The objective of this study was to characterize clinicopathological features of patients with biochemical recurrence after radical prostatectomy who did not exhibit a progressive rise in serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) during the follow-up period. Materials and Methods: We analyzed data from 162 consecutive patients who underwent radical prostatectomy for clinically organ-confined prostate cancer without neoadjuvant hormonal therapy and were followed postoperatively for at least 1 year. The serum PSA value was measured using an ultrasensitive PSA assay system (Roche Diagnostics, Mannheim, Germany), and biochemical recurrence was defined as a serum PSA of ≧0.1 ng/ml. Results: A total of 32 patients (19.8%) were diagnosed as having biochemical recurrence. Among these patients, we identified 10 (31.3%) with a serum PSA >0.1 ng/ml who had not shown PSA or clinical progression during a median follow-up of 34 months after radical prostatectomy. In these 10 patients, the median time to biochemical recurrence was 17 months, the median PSA velocity after biochemical recurrence was 0.034 ng/ml/year, and there was no patient whose serum PSA value became >0.4 ng/ml. There were no clinicopathological parameters except for PSA velocity that were significantly associated with the features of these 10 patients. Conclusion: Because of the presence of a subset of patients with biochemical recurrence after radical prostatectomy who will not show a progressive increase in serum PSA value, the indication for adjuvant therapy for such patients should be cautiously determined considering several factors, such as PSA kinetics.

Keywords:
Prostate cancer, Radical prostatectomy, Prostate-specific antigen, Biochemical recurrence
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© 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel
2006
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