Perineural invasion on biopsy specimen as predictor of tumor progression in aging male treated with radical prostatectomy. Could we use it for pre-surgical screening?

We aimed to analyze the correlation of perineural invasion on transrectal ultrasound guided prostate biopsy with predictors of biochemical cancer recurrence, as well as its impact on clinical outcomes, for non-metastatic prostate cancer. For the study, patients with perineural invasion (N = 86) were recruited into group I and underwent open retropubic prostatectomy, regardless of clinical stage; cases with prostate cancer but without perineural invasion on biopsy, who received radical prostatectomy as the treatment modality, were placed into group II (n = 90). Perineural invasion was detected preoperatively in 43% of cases that revealed surgical margin positivity postoperatively, while 85% of the remaining cases (group II) had negative surgical margins. There was no correlation on prostate biopsy between perineural invasion and Gleason score or PSA, based on Sperman's rank-order correlation analysis. However, there was strong positive correlation of perineural invasion with clinical stage and patients age. Additionaly, we demonstrated that perineural invasion on biopsy is a non-independent risk factor for metastatic occurrence, although the correlation was significant in univariate analysis. Nevertheless, we found strong correlation between invasion on initial biopsy specimen with biochemical cancer recurrence, suggesting that perineural invasion on prostate biopsy is a significant predictor of worse prognostic outcome.