Intraoperative and early complications of staging pelvic lymph node dissection in prostatic adenocarcinoma

Pelvic lymphadenectomy is the final staging procedure before institution of therapy for patients with clinically locally confined adenocarcinoma of the prostate, a normal acid phosphatase, and a bone scan free of metastatic disease. The pathologic information it provides cannot be accurately acquired at the present time by any other method. Extraperitoneal lymphadenectomy is associated with some morbidity intraoperatively and in the early postoperative period. We enumerate our results with 284 extraperitoneal lymphadenectomies.