Study questions use of prostate cancer 'staging'

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Prostate cancer is often discovered when the tumor is localized - meaning it has not spread beyond the site of the original cancer. Still, men with localized prostate cancer are given a "stage" of T1 or T2 to reflect the size of the tumor and other characteristics that involve the chances that the cancer will recur. Cancer staging can also help doctors and patients decide on treatments after surgery.

But a new study confirms what many cancer doctors have felt about localized prostate cancer staging: It just doesn't appear to matter after surgery.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, assessed the records of 3,875 men in a national database. The men had undergone prostate cancer surgery for localized tumors. The study showed that the stage was incorrectly assessed 35.4 percent of the time. An inappropriately low clinical stage was assigned in 55.1 percent of these cases and 44.9 percent of the errors consisted of an inappropriately high stage.

Nevertheless, the errors didn't seem to matter, the authors found. Even after the errors were corrected, staging did not predict the chances of the disease recurring.

"Our findings question the utility of our current staging system for localized prostate cancer," the lead author of the study, Adam C. Reese, said in a news release. The study was published online yesterday in the journal Cancer.