Prostate news article, May 2005
| PSA TEST MAY
NOT BE SO USELESS - AFTER ALL
CONFERENCE REPORT American Urology Association, San Antonio, May 2005 Reported by: Professor Roger S Kirby |
 |
Dr. William Catalona and colleagues in Chicago, IL and associates in St. Louis, MO have found a different and still important role for serum PSA correlation with CaP. Their findings were presented as Abstract #949 in the Prostate Cancer, Serum Markers Session at the AUA meeting in San Antonio.
Using three cohorts from radical prostatectomy (RP) series, they assessed the extent to which pre-operative PSA correlated with prostate weight, percentage of cancer, and cancer volume in the RP specimen.
The cohorts contained 2187 RP patients from a CaP screening study from 1989-2001, 389 patients treated by one surgeon from 2003-2004, and 401 RP patients treated by a mixed private surgeon group between 2001-2004.
All patients had prostate size measured by the weight of the surgically removed prostate. Pathologists who performed serial sectioning determined percentage of CaP. Cancer volume was determined by multiplying the percentage of cancer by the prostate volume.
In all 3 cohorts correlation coefficients were consistently higher for the correlation between PSA and percentage of cancer, and PSA and cancer volume, than between PSA and prostate size.
This suggests that PSA continues to be a valid serum marker for CaP and raises an important question mark over Dr Stamey's claim last year that "the PSA test is useless"