Radical prostatectomy in high-risk and locally advanced prostate cancer: Mayo Clinic perspective

Men diagnosed with high-risk prostate cancer represent the cohort of prostate cancer patients at greatest risk for subsequent disease-specific mortality. Unfortunately, however, the classification of high-risk tumors remains imprecise and heterogeneous. There has been a historical reluctance to offer such patients aggressive local treatment, and considerable debate exists regarding the optimal management in this setting.

We present here our institutional experience, as well as data from several other centers, with radical prostatectomy for high-risk tumors.

We discuss that surgery affords accurate pathological staging, thereby improving the identification of patients for secondary therapies. Moreover, prostatectomy not only provides durable local disease control but in addition numerous contemporary surgical series in high-risk patients have shown radical prostatectomy to be associated with excellent long-term cancer-specific survival. Further, although studies comparing surgical and radiotherapy modalities in high-risk prostate patients have been wrought with methodological challenges, consistently these observational studies have found equivalent to improved oncologic outcomes when surgery is utilized as the primary treatment.

Herein, we review the advantages, long-term outcomes, and technique of surgery for high-risk prostate cancer.