Prostate Cancer Found in 1.4% of TURP Specimens

In a recent study, pathologic examination of tissue specimens from men who underwent transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) for benign prostatic hyperplasia revealed that 1.4% of the patients had prostate cancer (PCa).

Given this low rate of incidental PCa detection, “the value of pathologic review of TURP specimens may be limited depending on the patient population,” researchers reported online ahead of print in Advances in Urology.

A team at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York analyzed pathologic findings of 771 men who underwent TURP from 2006 to 2011. Of these, 760 had benign pathology and 11 (1.4%) had PCa.

The researchers, led by Bilal Chughtai, MD, noted that prior to the PSA era, up to 27% of PCa cases were detected incidentally at the time of TURP. Other studies in addition to the new one have looked at incidental PCa detection in the PSA era and found detection rates of 4.8% to 16.7% detection rate.

“Our detection rate of 1.4% may be lower than the other reported series,” the authors wrote. “One reason may be that since this is the most recent series, a higher proportion of patients may have undergone systematic biopsies as indicated prior to their TURP compared to earlier series which may have included less cores in their biopsy specimens.”

In addition, the small amount of tissue removed in their study may have potentially resulted in underdetection of PCa, they stated. The mean weight of tissue resected was 8.1 grams and the mean proportion of tissue submitted for analysis was 96%.

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