title: Is a visible (hypoechoic) lesion at biopsy an independent predictor of prostate cancer outcome?
abstract: The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic implications of the sonographic appearance of prostate cancers. All patients with biopsy-proven prostate cancer between January 2003 and July 2004 (and at least 5 years of follow-up) were selected retrospectively. After exclusions, 101 patients constituted our study population and were divided into isoechoic (or nonvisible) and hypoechoic (or visible) lesion. The clinical outcomes of these two groups were compared. The outcomes for the two groups were significantly different (p < 0.01). For nonvisible lesions, 37 of the 41 patients (90.2%) had no disease relapse and 2 (4.9%) had biochemical failure. For the visible lesions, 37 of the 60 (61.6%) patients were free of recurrence, 7 (11.7%) had systemic metastases and 10 (16.7%) died of complications related to prostate cancer. Our data show that patients with nonvisible prostate cancer had significantly better outcomes than patients with visible lesions during a five-year period of evaluation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine (Imaging Science Center), School of Medicine of Ribeirao Preto, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Valeria Cristina
authors.initials: VC
authors.lastname: Nakano Junqueira
authors.forename: Orlando
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Zogbi
authors.forename: Adauto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cologna
authors.forename: Rodolfo Borges
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Dos Reis
authors.forename: Silvio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tucci
authors.forename: Leonardo Oliveira
authors.initials: LO
authors.lastname: Reis
authors.forename: Antonio Carlos
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Westphalen
authors.forename: Valdair Francisco
authors.initials: VF
authors.lastname: Muglia
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001707:Biopsy, Needle / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001938:Brazil / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015995:Prevalence; D011379:Prognosis; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000401:mortality* / Q000628:therapy; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D016019:Survival Analysis; D015996:Survival Rate; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*