Recurrence, metastasis, and survival after radical prostatectomy in the era of advanced treatments.

Abstract

5090 Background: Accurate survival estimates after prostatectomy are critical for patient counseling, treatment decisions, and trial design. Prior prostate cancer natural history studies may not reflect contemporary outcomes and often lack key endpoints (e.g. incident metastases). For these reasons, we explored population-based recurrence and survival following radical prostatectomy. Methods: We conducted a retrospective study of men with localized prostate cancer treated with radical prostatectomy from 2005-2015 with follow up through 2019 in the Veterans Health Administration. We excluded men with adjuvant radiation or hormonal therapy and defined biochemical recurrence (BCR) as a PSA ≥0.2 ng/mL. We used a validated natural language processing encoded dataset to identify incident metastatic disease. We then estimated actuarial time from surgery to BCR, BCR to metastatic disease, and metastatic disease to death using Kaplan-Meier methods. Results: Of 22,033 men post-prostatectomy, 5,963 (27%) developed BCR, with 5- and 10-year BCR estimates of 21% and 29% (Table). Of 5,963 men with BCR, 678 (11%) developed metastasis, with 5- and 10-year metastasis-free survival from time of BCR of 91% and 77%. Of these 678 men with metastases, 235 died (35%), with 5- and 10-year overall survival of 61% and 47%. Median actuarial overall survival from incident metastatic disease was 8.8 years. Conclusions: On average, we found a man undergoing radical prostatectomy for localized prostate cancer can expect about a 1 in 4 chance of biochemical recurrence. Of men with BCR, we identified a 1 in 10 chance of developing metastases, surviving nearly 9 years after incident metastasis. Both metastasis-free survival after biochemical recurrence and overall survival after developing metastasis appear to have lengthened consistent with a long natural history after prostate cancer surgery. Novel advanced prostate cancer treatments may help explain these findings, though their optimal use warrants further study especially as advanced imaging techniques to characterize recurrence increase. [Table: see text]