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Relationship of age to histologic grade in prostate cancer
Author(s) -
Borek Deborah,
Butcher David,
Hassanein Khatab,
Holmes Frederick
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
the prostate
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.295
H-Index - 123
eISSN - 1097-0045
pISSN - 0270-4137
DOI - 10.1002/pros.2990160405
Subject(s) - medicine , occult , prostate cancer , prostate , stage (stratigraphy) , carcinoma , disease , cancer , gastroenterology , oncology , pathology , paleontology , alternative medicine , biology
We studied 4,968 cases of prostatic carcinoma to determine if there is a relationship between tumor grade and patient age at diagnosis. Cases were stratified into arbitrary age groups and classified as either better differentiated (Grades I and II) or worse differentiated (Grades III and IV). The 4,596 graded cases were distributed by stage as follows: Local 3,451 (75%), Regional 509 (11%), and Distant 636 (14%). When patients in all stages were considered together, the percentage of men with better differentiated tumors dropped from 77.8% of patients under 60 to 67.5% of patients 80 or older ( P <0.00001). This trend for older patients to have more poorly differentiated tumors was also seen in patients with localized disease ( P >0.0005). The fact that occult, biologically inactive prostate cancer is common in older men has led some to extrapolate that clinically apparent disease follows a more benign course in the elderly. Our findings suggest that, on the contrary, elderly men with clinically apparent disease have worse differentiated tumors than their younger counterparts.