The Natural Course of Low Grade, Non‐metastatic Prostatic Carcinoma

Abstract

A surveillance study was carried out on 167 patients with low grade, low stage prostatic carcinoma without known metastases; of these, 146 were evaluated, the mean follow-up time being 50 months. Local tumour progression occurred in 77 patients (53%), corresponding to a 5-year cumulative probability of progression of 67%. Ten patients developed metastases, 5 died of prostatic carcinoma and 24 died of other causes. Cox's regression analysis showed that the initial cytological grade of the tumour was of prognostic importance, but initial local tumour stage, prostatic acid phosphatase activity and age had no statistically significant prognostic value. Although the number of patients developing metastases and dying of prostatic carcinoma was low, most tumours seemed to progress locally.

A retrospective study of high mobility group protein I(Y) as progression marker for prostate cancer determined by in situ hybridization

“…However, this may not have a significant impact on overall survival as these tumours show a variable clinical course that cannot be predicted with the current available markers. Thus, patients with the same disease status may or may not progress (Johansson et al, 1989;Adolfsson et al, 1990;Bostwick et al, 1993) after radical prostatectomy. As cancer cells undergo aberrant patterns of differentiation, it is likely that their phenotype, including cellular components responsible for differentiation, might be modified.…”

Lack of Evidence for the Association of <i>E-Cadherin</i> Gene Polymorphism with Increased Risk or Progression of Prostate Cancer

“…Prostate cancer is usually regarded as a slow-growing tumor. Not every patient with prostate cancer will experience progression in the disease [2]; on the other hand, metastases apparently still develop in a considerable group of patients who are treated radically for their localized disease [3]. For designing therapeutic strategy in individual cases, it would be of Tsukino/Kuroda/Imai/Nakao/Qiu/Komiya/ Inatomi/Hamasaki/Kohshi/Osada/Katoh great help to predict the metastatic potential of tumor.…”

Therapeutic Dilemmas in Prostate Cancer: Justification for Watchful Waiting

“…Observational studies [3, 4]have clearly demonstrated that for patients with well differentiated tumours, time to progression may be particularly prolonged, presumably because of slow tumour doubling time (fig. 1).…”