medwireNews: Modest differences in the time from diagnosis to radical prostatectomy do not appear to affect the outcomes of men with high- or very-high-risk prostate cancer, say the authors of a chart review.
When the 1392 participants were categorized by time from diagnostic biopsy to surgery, the risk for biochemical recurrence, metastasis, and prostate-cancer or all-cause mortality was not significantly increased for men who had surgery between 8 and 12 weeks or more than 12 weeks after diagnosis compared with those who were operated upon within 8 weeks of diagnosis, after adjusting for factors such as surgical margin and nodal status.
“This finding is of contemporary clinical importance, providing reassurance to clinicians counseling patients considering the safety of enrolling patients in dynamic neo-adjuvant or pharmacokinetic trials,” write Chad Reichard (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA) and co-researchers in BJU International.
They caution, however, that “this data should not necessarily be interpreted as an ability to predict an individual patient’s risk for tumor progression during a specific waiting period.”
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