Pelvic lymphadenectomy for the staging of apparently localized prostatic cancer

Staging pelvic lymphadenectomy has been done on 87 patients with clinically localized prostatic carcinoma. With this method nodal metastases can be discovered, although they are undetectable by any other means. There were 44 patients with negative pelvic lymph nodes by surgical staging subjected to radical prostatectomy. Only 6 patients (14 per cent) had microscopic invasion of the prostatic capsule and there was just 1 instance of microscopic seminal vesicle invasion in those with negative pelvic lymph nodes.