Prognostic value of cytology in terms of survival in prostatic cancer

The cytologic grade of malignancy and its relationship with survival was evaluated en 154 consecutive patients with prostatic cancer. The cytological aspirates were stained by the Papanicolay method and evaluated by two cytopathologists. Specimens were characterized as well, moderately or poorly differentiated, based on standard criteria. Patients without tumoral extension were initially untreated, and in the case of tumoral extension or posterior progression in the case of initially localized tumors, they were hormonally treated. The follow-up had a range between 33 and 120 months. The disease-specific survival was estimated by the Kaplan-Meier's curves. Our results indicate that there is a worse survival expectancy to the moderately differentiated tumors compared with the well differentiated. No difference was showed with the poorly differentiated, due to the low number of patients with it. The overall survival was compared to the control population survival, showing no difference except for the patients younger than 65 years old. The cytological aspirate of the prostate is not only a good method to diagnose prostatic cancer, our results confirm the prognostic value of the cytologic malignancy grading.