Skip to Main Content

An official website of the United States government

Prostate

The PLCO trial confirmed diagnoses of prostate cancer through medical record abstraction (MRA) of men suspected by the trial to have prostate cancer. MRA was triggered by:

  • A self-report of prostate cancer on an Annual Study Update (ASU)
  • Abnormal suspicious PSA or DRE screening
  • Death certificate indicates prostate cancer
  • No trial indication of prostate cancer, but Death Review Committee suspects prostate cancer based on other indicators
  • Relative informs screening center of participant's cancer (this is infrequent)

Note that if the MRA process does not find records indicating prostate cancer diagnosis, even if a source such as a death certificate indicates prostate cancer, the prostate cancer is not considered confirmed.

Clinical stage is almost always available (99% of prostate cancers). Pathologic stage is only available for men who had a prostatectomy (36% of prostate cancers).

Gleason scores were collected from both biopsies (98%) and prostatectomies (36%) and assessed at pathology labs local to the screening center. Gleason information was only captured on a 2 to 10 scale; primary and secondary Gleason scores were not captured individually.

Cancer diagnosis data can be obtained within the Prostate dataset.

Summary Available Data
  • Data for ~8800 cancers (2100 screen-detected)
  • Intervention arm statistics:
    • ~4600 cancers
    • Median age at dx: 69
    • Median years into study at dx: 5.3
  • Control Arm Statistics:
    • ~4200 cancers
    • Median age at dx: 70
    • Median years into study at dx: 6.3
  • Cancer confirmation status (confirmation, report only, no cancer, etc.)
  • Days from randomization to diagnosis
  • Screen-detected versus not screen-detected
  • Staging: Clinical, Path, Combined
  • Gleason: Biopsy, Prostatectomy, Combined
  • PSA level closest to diagnosis
  • Histology