Patients with Biopsy Gleason 9 and 10 Prostate Cancer Have Significantly Worse Outcomes Compared to Patients with Gleason 8 Disease

Purpose: We examined differences in outcome in patients with biopsy Gleason score 8 vs 9-10 who received definitive local therapy.

Materials and methods: Using an institutional database we identified a cohort of 847 patients with biopsy Gleason 8-10 disease who received definitive local therapy with radiation therapy or radical prostatectomy between January 2001 and December 2011. Multivariable Cox modeling was used to assess the association of Gleason score 8 vs 9-10 with time to biochemical recurrence, metastasis and overall survival, and evaluate treatment by Gleason score interaction. Median followup in the cohort was 5.3 years.

Results: Baseline patient characteristics were similar for biopsy Gleason 8 vs 9-10. Gleason 9-10 disease was associated with higher prostate specific antigen at diagnosis. As local treatment such patients were also more likely to have received radiation therapy (58% vs 46%, p = 0.001) and neoadjuvant/adjuvant androgen deprivation therapy (64% vs 49%, p <0.001). Those with higher grade disease were at increased risk for metastasis (HR 1.41, 95% CI 1.11-1.79). There was a trend toward an increased risk of death in Gleason 9-10 vs 8 cases (HR 1.28, 95% CI 0.98-1.66). The increased risk of death for Gleason 9-10 was mainly observed in patients treated with radical prostatectomy with or without additional radiation therapy (HR 1.74, 95% CI 1.15-2.65).

Conclusions: Patients with localized biopsy Gleason 9-10 disease treated with definitive local therapy had worse outcomes than those diagnosed with biopsy Gleason 8 disease. Clinical trials are urgently needed that incorporate newer approaches to Gleason 9-10 cancer.