Adenocarcinomas of the prostatic duct in necropsy material

The general consensus about prostatic duct adenocarcinomas is that they have a rather aggressive biological behavior. In addition, studies or reports of latent adenocarcinoma of the prostatic duct in necropsy material are scarce in the literature. We report here three cases of adenocarcinoma of the prostatic duct that were found incidentally among 39 cases of latent acinar prostate adenocarcinomas in necropsy material. We examined the morphologic and histological features of these prostatic duct adenocarcinomas, in order to better understand their biological behavior. We identified two cases of mixed ductal-acinar adenocarcinoma and one case of pure ductal adenocarcinoma. The pure form had a favorable histological differentiation, while the mixed forms had intermediate histological differentiation patterns. Invasiveness was related to both volume and histological differentiation. The finding of prostatic ductal adenocarcinomas among autopsy material, as well as some of their histological features, suggest that these tumors might have a similar biological potential as prostatic acinar cancer.