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In patients who have undergone radical prostatectomy for localized prostate cancer, periodic monitoring of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels is recommended to screen for “biochemical recurrence” — a rise in PSA that might predict clinically evident recurrence. In this Japanese study, researchers sought to determine when postprostatectomy PSA monitoring can be stopped.
Nearly 600 patients who underwent radical prostatectomy were followed an average of 10 years; patients had PSA testing (using an ultrasensitive assay) every 3 to 6 months during the first 3 postprostatectomy years and annually thereafter. Among 187 patients with undetectable PSA (<0.01 ng/mL) at 3 years, only 2 patients had later biochemical recurrence (defined as PSA elev…