prostate-report.org

A positive surgical margin predicts the recurrence of prostate cancer

A research team has recently published data based on a series of 11,729 patients who underwent open radical retropublic prostatectomy at the Mayor Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, between 1990 and 2006. Researchers goal was to better establish the impact of surgical margin status on clinical progression and mortality. The basic results of this careful analysis were as follows:

The authors note that their data show a distinct reduction in the frequency of positive surgical margins (at least in  their series) over the past 20 years. They conclude that the presence of a positive margin after radical prostatectomy does increase the probability of biochemical recurrence, local recurrence, and the delivery of salvage therapy. However, it does not reliably predict risk for systemic progression, cancer-specific death, or overall mortality.