PSMA-PET is increasingly used for staging prostate cancer (PCA) patients. However, it is not clear if quantitative imaging parameters of positron emission tomography (PET) have an impact on disease progression and are thus important for the prognosis of localized PCA.
This is a monocenter retrospective analysis of 86 consecutive patients with localized intermediate or high-risk PCA and PSMA-PET before treatment The quantitative PET parameters maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), tumor asphericity (ASP), PSMA tumor volume (PSMA-TV), and PSMA total lesion uptake (PSMA-TLU = PSMA-TV × SUVmean) were assessed for their prognostic significance in patients with radiotherapy or surgery. Cox regression analyses were performed for biochemical recurrence-free survival, overall survival (OS), local control, and loco-regional control (LRC).
67% of patients had high-risk disease, 51 patients were treated with radiotherapy, and 35 with surgery. Analysis of metric PET parameters in the whole cohort revealed a significant association of PSMA-TV (p = 0.003), PSMA-TLU (p = 0.004), and ASP (p < 0.001) with OS. Upon binarization of PET parameters, several other parameters showed a significant association with clinical outcome. When analyzing high-risk patients according to the primary treatment approach, a previously published cut-off for SUVmax (8.6) showed a significant association with LRC in surgically treated (p = 0.048), but not in primary irradiated (p = 0.34) patients. In addition, PSMA-TLU (p = 0.016) seemed to be a very promising biomarker to stratify surgical patients.
Our data confirm one previous publication on the prognostic impact of SUVmax in surgically treated patients with high-risk PCA. Our exploratory analysis indicates that PSMA-TLU might be even better suited. The missing association with primary irradiated patients needs prospective validation with a larger sample size to conclude a predictive potential. Trial registration Due to the retrospective nature of this research, no registration was carried out.
Radiation oncology (London, England). 2024 Jul 29*** epublish ***
Stephanie Bela Andela, Holger Amthauer, Christian Furth, Julian M Rogasch, Marcus Beck, Felix Mehrhof, Pirus Ghadjar, Jörg van den Hoff, Tobias Klatte, Rana Tahbaz, Daniel Zips, Frank Hofheinz, Sebastian Zschaeck
Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Radiation Oncology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Augustenburger Platz 1, 13353, Berlin, Germany. ., Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany., Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Radiation Oncology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Augustenburger Platz 1, 13353, Berlin, Germany., Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, PET Center, Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research, Dresden, Germany., Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Urology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.