Flow cytometric determination of ploidy in prostatic adenocarcinoma and its relation to clinical outcome

Flow cytometry was used to measure the DNA content in paraffin-embedded archival specimens of prostatic adenocarcinoma. The specimens were from 49 patients who were found to have adenocarcinoma of the prostate at the time of transurethral resection of the prostate for bladder outlet obstruction. At initial presentation, 34 of these patients had clinically localized disease and 15 had metastatic disease. The authors studied the relationship of DNA ploidy to clinical stage, histologic grade, disease progression, and duration of survival. Their results indicate that regardless of the clinical stage at presentation, the mean time to disease progression is longer in a patient with a DNA diploid tumor when compared with that in a patient with a DNA aneuploid tumor (18.1 months vs 6.5 months, respectively). Additionally, mean time of survival was longer in a patient with a diploid tumor than in a patient with an aneuploid tumor (31.6 months vs 9.6 months, respectively).