Porcentaje de subgraduación del puntaje de Gleason en la biopsia transrectal de pacientes candidatos a vigilancia activa Percentage of Gleason score under grading in transrectal biopsies of patients candidates to active surveillance

INTRODUCTION: Active surveillance (AS) is a validated alternative for the management of patients with prostate cancer that meet certain criteria including the histopathological characteristics of preoperative transrectal biopsy. The down-grading of preoperative Gleason score compared to postoperative biopsy is reported in 24-39% of cases, which represents a significative problem to include a patient in a AS protocol. The main objective of this study was to determine the percentage of down-grading Gleason score compared to postoperative biopsy is reported in 24-39% of cases, which represents a significative problem to include a patient in a AS protocol. The main objective of this study was to determine the percentage of down-grading of the preoperative Gleason score compared to the definitive score in biopsy specimens from patients that met criteria for AS but that were subjected to a radical prostatectomy, and the relation between the number of punctures and the percentage of downgrading. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 167 patients subjected to radical prostatectomy were retrospectively included, all of them having preoperative characteristics that fulfilled the criteria for entry into an AS protocol. We evaluated the correlation between preoperative and postoperative biopsies. We also evaluated the relationship between the number of punctures and the percentage of down-grading in the preoperative biopsy. RESULTS: 52 patients (31.1%) were found to have a Gleason score higher than 6 (GS 7 n=49; GS 8 n=3) in the definitive biopsy. The lowest percentage of downgrading (23.4%) was observed in the group of patients with preoperative biopsies that included 15 or more punctures.