Efficacy of Local Treatment in Prostate Cancer Patients with Clinically Pelvic Lymph Node-positive Disease at Initial Diagnosis.

There is limited evidence supporting the use of local treatment (LT) for prostate cancer (PCa) patients with clinically pelvic lymph node-positive (cN1) disease.

To examine the efficacy of any form of LT±androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in treating these individuals.

Using the National Cancer Database (2003-2011), we retrospectively identified 2967 individuals who received LT±ADT versus ADT alone for cN1 PCa. Only radical prostatectomy (RP) and radiation therapy (RT) were considered as definitive LT.

LT±ADT versus ADT alone.

Instrumental variable analyses (IVA) were performed using a two-stage residual inclusion approach to compare overall mortality (OM)-free survival between patients who received LT±ADT versus ADT alone. The same methodology was used to further compare OM-free survival between patients who received RP±ADT versus RT±ADT.

Overall, 1987 (67%) and 980 (33%) patients received LT±ADT and ADT alone, respectively. In the LT±ADT group, 751 (37.8%) and 1236 (62.2%) patients received RP±ADT and RT±ADT, respectively. In IVA, LT±ADT was associated with a significant OM-free survival benefit (hazard ratio=0.31, 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.13-0.74, p=0.007), when compared with ADT alone. At 5 yr, OM-free survival was 78.8% (95% CI: 74.1-83.9%) versus 49.2% (95% CI: 33.9-71.4%) in the LT±ADT versus ADT alone groups. When comparing RP±ADT versus RT±ADT, IVA showed no significant difference in OM-free survival between the two treatment modalities (hazard ratio=0.54, 95% CI=0.19-1.52, p=0.2). Despite the use of an IVA, our study may be limited by residual unmeasured confounding.

Our findings show that PCa patients with clinically pelvic lymph node-positive disease may benefit from any form of LT±ADT over ADT alone. While not necessarily curative by itself, the use of RP or RT could be the first step in a multi-modality approach aiming at providing the best cancer control outcomes for these individuals.

We examined the role of local treatment for clinically pelvic lymph node-positive prostate cancer. We found that the delivery of radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy may be associated with an overall mortality-free survival benefit compared with androgen deprivation therapy alone.

European urology. 2017 Sep 07 [Epub ahead of print]

Thomas Seisen, Malte W Vetterlein, Patrick Karabon, Tarun Jindal, Akshay Sood, Luigi Nocera, Paul L Nguyen, Toni K Choueiri, Quoc-Dien Trinh, Mani Menon, Firas Abdollah

Center for Outcomes Research, Analytics and Evaluation, Vattikuti Urology Institute, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI, USA; Division of Urological Surgery and Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA., Center for Outcomes Research, Analytics and Evaluation, Vattikuti Urology Institute, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI, USA., Department of Radiation Oncology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA., Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA., Division of Urological Surgery and Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA., Center for Outcomes Research, Analytics and Evaluation, Vattikuti Urology Institute, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI, USA. Electronic address: .