Management of lymph node-positive prostate cancer: the role of surgery and radiation therapy

Abstract

There is no clear consensus on how to manage a subset of patients with prostate cancer (PCa) who present with involved lymph nodes (LN+). Although outcomes for these patients are uniformly worse than those for patients with localized PCa, they are better than outcomes for patients with bone metastases, with more than 60% of patients alive at 10 years after the initial diagnosis. This article reviews the existing data on outcomes for patients treated with various combinations of systemic and local therapies. Current evidence suggests both a disease-control benefit and a survival benefit to multimodality therapy, which combines systemic androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) with local therapies, such as surgery and radiation, without evidence of excessive treatment-related toxicities.