Background: We carried out a retrospective study comparing radical prostatectomy plus adjuvant hormone therapy with radical prostatectomy plus surveillance in patients with positive surgical margins to evaluate whether adjuvant hormone therapy is beneficial for disease free survival.
Patients and methods: Sixty-five patients with positive surgical margins after radical prostatectomy were included in this study. Twenty-six patients received adjuvant hormone therapy. Thirty-nine patients underwent surveillance with salvage hormone therapy at PSA failure. None of these 65 received androgen deprivation prior to surgery. Treatment outcomes were measured in terms of progression free survival.
Results: Five year clinical progression free survival rates for the patients with positive surgical margins in the adjuvant therapy group and surveillance group were 85.9% and 80.0% respectively (p = 0.85). Clinical progression free survival between the groups was not statistically different in terms of seminal vesicle involvement and tumor grade. The difference of clinical progression free survival between the two groups approached statistical significance in poorly differentiated tumor (p = 0.08).
Conclusions: We conclude that adjuvant hormone therapy is not beneficial in terms of progression free survival in patients with positive surgical margins. Nevertheless, adjuvant hormone therapy could be beneficial in patients with poorly differentiated prostate cancer.