The sufficiency of 6 core sextant prostate biopsy in patients with prostate specific antigen (PSA) values over 20 ng/mL

Objective: In this study, we aimed to investigate sufficiency of 6 core prostate biopsy in patients with PSA levels elevated above 20 ng/mL. Materials and methods: The medical record of the patients who received prostate biopsy at our institution between August 2011 to August 2016 who had serum total PSA values above 20 ng/mL, were reviewed retrospectively. In this study, we included 40 patients who received 6 core prostate biopsy and 40 patients who received 12 core prostate biopsy. A total number of 80 patients were enrolled in this study. Patients were divided into two groups, a 6 core biopsy group and a 12 core biopsy group. These groups are compared according to age, total PSA, prostate volume and final pathological diagnosis. Results: Based on final pathological diagnosis, 2 patients (5%) had benign pathology and 38 patients (95%) had PCa in both group 1 and 2. The cancer detection rate in both groups was 95%. Although there were higher values of mean age, mean total PSA, and mean prostate volume in group 1, there was no statistically significantly difference at this variables in both groups. Conclusion: Although taking 6 core biopsies is not recently recommended, we proved that 6 core biopsy is adequate for patients with PSA values above 20 ng/mL

The Prognostic Nutritional Index (PNI): A New Biomarker for Determining Prognosis in Metastatic Castration-Sensitive Prostate Carcinoma

Prognostic nutritional index (PNI), which is calculated using the albumin level reflectingnutritional status and lymphocyte count reflecting immune status, is useful in showing nutritionaland immunological status related to survival and prognosis in many cancers. In this study, we aimedto evaluate the biomarker potential and effect of PNI in determining the prognosis of metastaticcastration-sensitive prostate cancer (mCSPC). This retrospective observational study included thecomplete data of 108 patients with mCPSC who were treated for at least three months between1 January 2010, and 1 June 2021. The relationships between cancer-specific survival (CSS), overallsurvival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and PNI were evaluated. The Kaplan–Meier methodfor OS, PFS, and CSS, as well as univariate and multivariate Cox regression models, were used forthe statistical analyses. The median age of 108 patients included in the study was 68.54 (61.05–74.19)years. A value of 49.75 was determined to be the best cut-off point for the PNI. OS (months) wasfound to be significantly lower in patients with low PNI (median: 34.93, 95% CI: 21.52–48.34) thanin patients with high PNI (median: 65.60, 95% CI: 39.36–91.83) (p = 0.016). Patients with high PNI(median: 48.20, 95% CI: 34.66–61.73) had significantly better CSS (months) than patients with lowPNI (median: 27.86, 95% CI: 24.16–31.57) (p = 0.001). There was no statistically significant differencein PFS between patients with high PNI values (median: 24.60, 95% CI: 10.15–39.05) and patients withlow PNI values (median: 20.03, 95% CI: 11.06–29.03) (p = 0.092). The PNI is a good predictor of OSand CSS in patients with mCSPC. The prediction of PFS, albeit showing a trend towards significance,was not statistically significant, probably due to the small number of cases.</p

A general formal framework for pathfinding problems with multiple agents

Pathfinding for a single agent is the problem of planning a route from an initial location to a goal location in an environment, going around obstacles. Pathfinding for multiple agents also aims to plan such routes for each agent, subject to different constraints, such as restrictions on the length of each path or on the total length of paths, no self-intersecting paths, no intersection of paths/plans, no crossing/meeting each other. It also has variations for finding optimal solutions, e.g., with respect to the maximum path length, or the sum of plan lengths. These problems are important for many real-life applications, such as motion planning, vehicle routing, environmental monitoring, patrolling, computer games. Motivated by such applications, we introduce a formal framework that is general enough to address all these problems: we use the expressive high-level representation formalism and efficient solvers of the declarative programming paradigm Answer Set Programming. We also introduce heuristics to improve the computational efficiency and/or solution quality. We show the applicability and usefulness of our framework by experiments, with randomly generated problem instances on a grid, on a real-world road network, and on a real computer game terrain

The Prognostic Role of Inflammatory Biomarkers in Metastatic Castration Sensitive Prostate Carcinoma

Objectives: Due to limited data in the literature on the prognostic value of inflammatory markers neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and derived NLR (dNLR) in metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer (mCSPC), we aimed to determine the role of this markers in the prognosis of mCSPC. Methods: In this study, inflammatory marker values in mCSPC (NLR0, PLR0, dNLR0) and mCRPC (NLR1, PLR1, dNLR1) were calculated. Characteristics of the patients and the effects of inflammatory markers on overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) were evaluated using appropriate statistical methods. Results: The median age of 124 patients was 68.71 years. No significant difference was found OS in mCSPC NLR0, dNLR0 and PLR0 groups (p&gt;0,05). While the median CSS was statistically longer in the NLR0, dNLR0 and PLR0 low groups (Median:45.9 vs 35.7 months for NLR0, 47.0 vs 34.6 months for dNLR and 46.2 vs 33.9 months, p=0.037, p=0.036, p=0.041 respectively). There was no significant difference in terms of OS and CSS in NLR1 and dNLR1 groups (p&gt;0.05). The patients with low PLR1 showed statistical significantly better OS and CSS (p=0.027 for OS and p=0.006 for CSS). Conclusion: Although inflammatory markers have prognostic value in many cancers, mCSPC which have heterogeneous and complex structures, are still controversial, and more studies are needed for their routine use. Keywords: Castration, inflammation, prostate cancer, prognosis</p

Pathology outcomes in patients with transurethral bladder tumour resection in a Turkish population: A retrospective analysis

Objectives: Transurethral bladder tumour resection (TURBT) is the common surgical method used in the diagnosis, staging and treatment of patients with bladder tumour. Most of the rare tumours other than the urothelial carcinomas of the bladder are in advanced stage on diagnosis and necessitate aggressive treatment. In our study, we aimed to the histologic types of bladder cancer and to determine the regional incidence of rare bladder cancer types in our region. Materials and methods: We retrospectively evaluated 815 patients who underwent TURBT surgery between January 2010 and March 2016 in our clinic with a diagnosis of bladder cancer and at least 1 year follow-up. Patients with tumour histopathological examination including histological tumour type, grade and were reported. Thirty-nine patients with an unclear pathology report (neighboring organ invasion, cautery artifact, etc) and 17 patients whose data could not be accessed were excluded from the study. The patients who had received chemotherapy or radiotherapy due to any type of malignancy (23) were also excluded from the study. Results: The outcomes of 736 patients operated in our clinics due to bladder tumour were evaluated. The mean age was 65.2 ± 8.4; 135 were female and 601 were male. Among them 711 patients with urothelial carcinoma were reported (94.2%). According to TNM classification, stage Ta was observed in 270 patients (37.9%), stage T1 in 297 (41.7%), and stage T2 in 144 (20.3%). Non-urothelial cancers were reported in 25 cases (3.3%). Conclusion: The incidence of bladder carcinoma varies between regions. The results of our study are similar to those of the western countries. Increased smoking and exposure to environmental carcinogenetic agents may lead to altered incidences and histological types of bladder tumours. Revision of regional tumour records may be useful to develop and evaluate future treatment strategies