Of 553 patients definitively irradiated for biopsy proven prostatic adenocarcinoma from January 1976 to March 1986, 287 patients with a minimum follow-up of 4 years were studied. One hundred sixty-two patients had transurethral prostatic resection (TURP); one hundred twenty-five patients did not. When subdivided by stage and histologic grade, those patients with poorly differentiated tumors who underwent TURP had a noticeably higher, but not statistically different, incidence of bony metastasis as compared to those who did not have TURP. Survival at 5 years also appeared to be better in patients with poorly differentiated and stage C disease without TURP. However, local tumor recurrence in poorly differentiated tumor with TURP was 42% as compared to 20% in the NO TURP group, p = .04. Moreover, when the incidence of osseous metastasis was assessed by local tumor status, 20% of the TURP patients with local tumor control developed metastases as compared to 66% of those with local failure. Similarly, within the NO TURP group, the incidence of bony metastasis was 16% for those with local control and 50% for those with local recurrence, p = .005 in both cases. Survival was likewise affected by local tumor control, regardless of whether or not TURP was performed. In patients with local tumor control, survival was 80% at 5 years with TURP and 86% without TURP (p greater than 0.1). In contrast, only 14% of patients with local recurrence and TURP were alive at 5 years which was not statistically different from the 32% survival in those with local recurrence but NO TURP. It seems, therefore, that comparing prognosis by TURP alone overlooks the inherent characteristics of the tumor and the extent of the disease.