Preoperative erythropoietin administration in patients with prostate cancer undergoing radical prostatectomy without...

In this study, we administered erythropoietin preoperatively to patients who underwent open radical prostatectomy without transfusion to increase their hemoglobin levels and investigated the efficacy of this procedure.

We evaluated 62 patients who underwent open radical prostatectomy performed by the same surgeon between June 2005 and January 2011. The 22 patients who refused transfusion were assigned to group 1; the patients who accepted transfusion were assigned to group 2. Before surgery, we administered erythropoietin beta to group 1 patients whose hemoglobin levels were <12 g/dL and retrospectively compared the clinical data of the two groups. We used the t-test and the chi-square test for statistical analysis.

Mean preoperative hemoglobin levels in group 1 after erythropoietin administration (14.5 g/dL) were significantly higher than those in group 2 (13.59 g/dL, p=0.003). Moreover, the difference in the mean hemoglobin levels before and after surgery for group 1 patients (3.55 g/dL) significantly exceeded that for group 2 patients (2.08 g/dL, p=0.000). Additional analysis revealed no statistically significant differences in perioperative complications between the groups.

Preoperative erythropoietin administration increased the safety margin of hemoglobin levels, and this strategy worked sufficiently well in our experience.