External Validation and Addition of Prostate-specific Membrane Antigen Positron Emission Tomography to the Most Frequently Used Nomograms for the Prediction of Pelvic Lymph-node Metastases: an International Multicenter Study

Background: Different nomograms exist for the preoperative prediction of pelvic lymph-node metastatic disease in individual patients with prostate cancer (PCa). These nomograms do not incorporate modern imaging techniques such as prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) positron emission tomography (PET). Objective: To determine the predictive performance of the Briganti 2017, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), and Briganti 2019 nomograms with the addition of PSMA-PET in an international, multicenter, present-day cohort of patients undergoing robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) and extended pelvic lymph-node dissection (ePLND) for localized PCa. Design, setting, and participants: All 757 eligible patients who underwent a PSMA-PET prior to RARP and ePLND in three reference centers for PCa surgery between January 2016 and November 2020 were included. Outcome measurements and statistical analysis: Performance of the three nomograms was assessed using the receiver operating characteristic curve-derived area under the curve (AUC), calibration plots, and decision curve analyses. Subsequently, recalibration and addition of PSMA-PET to the nomograms were performed. Results and limitations: Overall, 186/757 patients (25%) had pelvic lymph-node metastatic (pN1) disease on histopathological examination. AUCs of the Briganti 2017, MSKCC, and Briganti 2019 nomograms were 0.70 (95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 0.64-0.77), 0.71 (95% CI: 0.65-0.77), and 0.76 (95% CI: 0.71-0.82), respectively. PSMA-PET findings showed a significant association with pN1 disease when added to the nomograms (p < 0.001). Addition of PSMA-PET substantially improved the discriminative ability of the models yielding cross-validated AUCs of 0.76 (95% CI: 0.70-0.82), 0.77 (95% CI: 0.72-0.83), and 0.82 (95% CI: 0.76-0.87), respectively. In decision curve analyses, the addition of PSMA-PET to the three nomograms resulted in increased net benefits. Conclusions: The addition of PSMA-PET to the previously developed nomograms showed substantially improved predictive performance, which suggests that PSMA-PET is a likely future candidate for a modern predictive nomogram. Patient summary: Different tools have been developed to individualize the prediction of prostate cancer spread to lymph nodes before surgery. We found that the inclusion of modern imaging (prostate-specific membrane antigen positron emission tomography) improved substantially the overall performance of these prediction tools. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

The study evaluated the predictive performance of different nomograms for pelvic lymph-node metastatic disease in prostate cancer patients with the addition of PSMA-PET, demonstrating improved discriminative ability of the models with the inclusion of PSMA-PET and suggesting its potential clinical utility for patient prognosis.