Evaluation and management of prostate-specific antigen recurrence after radical prostatectomy for localized prostate cancer

A radical prostatectomy has been established as one of the standardmanagement options for localized prostate cancer. However, asubstantial proportion of patients who undergo a radical prostatectomydevelop prostate-specific antigen (PSA) recurrence which iscommonly defined as a PSA cut-off point value of 0.2 ng/ml.Although the management of PSA recurrence after radical prostatectomymay depend on the site of recurrence, it is quite difficultto identify the recurrent lesion accurately based on the currentlyavailable imaging technology. Patients who have surgical margininvolvement or a Gleason score 7 based on the radical prostatectomyspecimens, who do not have nodal or seminal vesicle involvement,and who develop a PSA recurrence >1–2 years after surgerywith a doubling time of >1 year, and whose pre-treatmentPSA is <1.0–1.5 ng/ml are considered to benefit fromlocal treatment with at least 64 Gy of salvage radiotherapy.Patients with different characteristics are considered to havedistant metastases or both local lesions and distant metastases,and thus may be candidates for hormonal manipulation ratherthan radiotherapy. Since local recurrent lesions are consideredto be quite small at the early stage of PSA recurrence, hormonalmanipulation may be sufficient to prevent disease progressioninstead of radiotherapy. However, the optimal type and timingof hormonal manipulation remain to be elucidated. As a result,no consensus regarding the treatment for PSA recurrence afterradical prostatectomy has yet been reached.