In this long-term study with a median followup of greater than 10 years 62 patients who underwent bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomy and radical retropubic prostatectomy for stage D1 adenocarcinoma of the prostate were subdivided with respect to nuclear deoxyribonucleic acid ploidy status of the primary cancer and according to whether they received adjuvant early antiandrogen therapy. Patients with diploid cancers who underwent the operation and received adjuvant early endocrine therapy did significantly better than a similar group without early endocrine therapy with respect to disease-free survival (p less than 0.001) and survival from prostate cancer death (p = 0.03). Among patients with nondiploid tumors early endocrine therapy was of some benefit for disease-free survival (p = 0.06) but not for prostate cancer death (p = 0.46).