Objective: To find a morphologic model of the development of prostate hyperplasia.
Methods: Study of the transitional zone in 60 patients (30 with infravesical obstruction, 30 with no obstructive symptoms) and quantification of the involved surface, number of pure stromal and glandular-stromal nodes, node area for each of them, and non-nodular area of the transitional zone, correlating each parameter to age based on clinical status.
Results: The greater transitional zone area is seen in patients with obstruction: 1376.83 +/- 408.17 mm2 vs 321.39 +/- 151.49 mm2 in asymptomatic patients, mainly due to a higher number of glandular-stromal nodes (17 vs 2.2) and their size, with a correlation to age (p = 0.03). Moderate increases of non-nodular areas are also found.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that onset of prostate hyperplasia may be due to a consistent increase of the transitional area, and that in some patients, probably because of local factors, nodular development occurs as a result of both an increase in nodes number and size.