Specificity and sensitivity of preoperative total serum prostate specific antigen in diagnosis most common histopathological change of prostate

Abstract

Determination of preoperative prostate-specific antigen (PSA) value is primary procedure in diagnosis of different pathological prostate changes (prostate cancer-PC, prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia-PIN and benign prostatic hyperplasia-BPH), followed by digital rectal examination and prostate biopsy as gold standard. Disadvantage of high sensitivity and low specificity of PSA testing in diagnosis of PC is a problem in clinical practice. Aim was to determine the diagnostic performance of PSA in diagnosis of PC, PIN and BPH. The study included 100 patients divided into three groups: 70 with PC, 20 with a PIN and 10 with BPH. Patients with PIN and BPH were control group. Preoperative PSA values were determined by Tandem-R, The patients were divided into subgroups by baseline PSA level as follows: 4-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40 and> 40. The definitive histopathological diagnosis was made on routine hematoxylineosin slides. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC), sensitivity-SE and specificity-SP of each PSA level were evaluated for PC. Preoperative serum PSA levels in patients with PC (median-35.82 ng/ml, min-6 ng/ml, max-960.40 ng/ml) were significantly higher than with PIN (median-9.15 ng/ml, min-3.16 ng/ml, max-27.61 ng/ml) and BPH (median-8.68 ng/ml, min-0.80 ng/ml, max-31.20 ng/ml). The best diagnostic characteristics of the PSA are on limit value 10 ng/ml (AUC=0.781, SE=92.9%; SP=63.3%; p<0,0001). PSA is of great help in diagnosis of advanced and initial form of PC. The chance of PC diagnosis was greater than that for other pathological changes when PSA level was higher than 10 ng/ml.

Keywords

• Prostate cancer
• Prostate specific antigen
• Sensitivity
• Specificity