Purpose: Untreated stage pTxN+ prostate cancer is associated with a poor outcome. Monotherapy (surgery, radiation, hormonal therapy) alone is associated with a high progression rate. We evaluate whether radical prostatectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy plus early adjuvant orchiectomy impart a survival advantage compared to pelvic lymphadenectomy and orchiectomy alone in a matched cohort of patients.
Materials and methods: Between 1966 and 1995, 382 and 79 patients with stage pTxN+ prostate cancer underwent pelvic lymphadenectomy and radical prostatectomy plus early adjuvant orchiectomy (within 3 months of prostatectomy), and pelvic lymphadenectomy and orchiectomy only, respectively. We selected 79 matched controls from the prostatectomy plus orchiectomy group for the orchiectomy group. Patients were matched according to the number of positive nodes, clinical grade, clinical stage, age, year of surgery and preoperative prostate specific antigen (after 1987). The Kaplan-Meier method and stratified Cox proportional hazards model were used to estimate overall and cause specific survival for the 2 groups.
Results: There was an overall survival advantage at 10 years for the prostatectomy plus orchiectomy (66+/-6%) compared to the orchiectomy (28+/-6%) group (p <0.001, risk ratio 0.36, 95% confidence interval 0.20 to 0.66). There was also an advantage in cause specific survival at 10 years in the prostatectomy plus orchiectomy (79+/-5%) versus the orchiectomy (39+/-7%) group (p <0.001, relative risk 0.28, 95% confidence interval 0.13 to 0.59). After 1987, when matched on preoperative prostate specific antigen, the apparent survival advantage at 5 years with radical prostatectomy was smaller (79+/-8 versus 63+/-9% orchiectomy) and not significant (p = 0.19).
Conclusions: This retrospective study of patients with stage pTxN+ PC suggests that radical prostatectomy with early adjuvant orchiectomy may provide a significant advantage in overall and cause specific survival compared to orchiectomy alone.