Treatment quality of prostate cancer centers. Analysis of the 2014 annual report of the German Cancer Society

BACKGROUND As of 31 December 2012, 92 departments of urology had been certified as a prostate cancer center by the German Cancer Society (DKG). In this paper, the treatment quality of these centers based on the annual 2014 DKG report shall be critically analyzed. BASIC DATA AND PATIENTS In 2013, 19,558 primary cases of prostate cancer were registered. The mean number of primary cases per year was 159 (range 101-2089), whereby the minimum number of > 100 had been reached by all centers. The median number of radical prostatectomies decreased to 84 (range 35-2145); 6 of 88 centers did not fulfill the minimum number of 50 radical prostatectomies per year. Concerning radiotherapy or brachytherapy no minimal requirements exist. RESULTS The number of operative revisions and wound infections including drainage of lymphoceles following radical prostatectomies and the relative number of nerve-sparing radical prostatectomies in low-risk patients with an IIEF > 22 are described. The requirement of < 10 % R1 resections was only fulfilled in 52 of 86 (60.5 %) centers; the median was 8.9 %. Data concerning treatment quality of external beam irradiation as well as data for potency and continence of all treatment modalities are completely lacking. CONCLUSION The large number of registered prostate cancer cases offers the perfect opportunity to generate reliable benchmark data for all treatment modalities of prostate cancer. It is desirable that in the near future functional data such as continence and potency rates as well as prostate-specific antigen (PSA) recurrences of all treatment modalities will be reported.