Rationale of Surgery in Locally Advanced and Oligometastatic Prostate Cancer

ABSTRACT

There is no clear consensus for the best treatment of men with locally advanced prostate cancer. As a first step, radiation therapy or primary hormone therapy or radical prostatectomy with extended pelvic lymph node dissection is used. But it seems impossible to have a good oncologic result with single treatment modality. Traditionally, external beam radiation therapy with adjuvant hormone therapy is most preferred treatment method in locally advanced prostate cancer and radical prostatectomy has not been routinely used because of high rates of margin positive and lymph node metastasis. But, recently published articles showed that surgery in multimodal setting is effective treatment modality and not inferior to radiation therapy in oncologic outcomes. Perioperative morbidities of surgery and incontinence rates are similar to surgery of organ confined diseases, and patients with primary radiotherapy seem to have high rate of lower urinary tract symptoms and radiation related complications compared with radical prostatectomy with adjuvant radiotherapy. There is still controversy in regard to performing surgery for locally advanced prostate cancer. We review the studies with surgery in locally advanced prostate cancer and compare with radiation therapy in multimodal setting, and review the studies with surgery in oligometastatic prostate cancer.