Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed non-cutaneous cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men, globally, in 2020 (1, 2). For localized disease, radical prostatectomy (RP) is one of the main treatments with an excellent long-time prognosis (3, 4). However, RP has a low cure rate but a high complication rate for metastatic prostate cancer (mPCa). The majority of patients with mPCa will progress to having metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) within 2–3 years despite undergoing intensive androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) (5). Although novel androgen biosynthesis inhibitors such as abiraterone and enzalutamide have been introduced to prolong survival in mCRPC, most patients respond temporarily and soon develop resistance to the inhibitors, which results in the failure to control the tumor progression at the end (6, 7). Hence once the disease enters a castration-resistant state, the patients are incurable by medicine along with therapy and under a substantially greater risk of mortality (1). According to previous literature, about 83.3% of patients with PCa also have bladder outlet obstruction (BOO) (1, 8). Some of these patients have obvious lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and some complications like persistent hematuria, urinary retention, high residual urine volume, bladder stones, etc. These symptoms have been increasingly troublesome for the patients and seriously affect their daily lives.

Patients with BOO who are medicine-failed or have absolute surgical indications are suggested to receive operation intervention, referring to the guidelines (9, 10). The transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) has been the standard surgical treatment for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) for many years (11). For patients with mPCa with serious BOO who have failed medical therapy and are unwilling to use a catheter for a long time, palliative TURP (pTURP) serves as an effective surgical choice to relieve BOO and improve symptoms (12, 13). However, it creates a dilemma for urologists because it might potentially accelerate the tumor progression. Although several studies have investigated the effects of pTURP on mPCa (14–16), the long-term oncological data is still missing. In this study, we aim to evaluate the prognostic impact of pTURP on patients with mPCa.

Most of the patients with the metastatic prostate disease will develop castration resistance, which means that they will face an unfavorable prognosis and survival (17). For patients with severe BOO and mPCa, whether or not to perform pTURP is a dilemma. Its benefits and harms need to be balanced for these patients. pTURP can relieve obstruction, improve lower urinary tract symptoms and the complications of BOO, and damage the primary tumor. But it may create a source for new metastasis like residual tumor and cancerous cell debris. The channel opened by pTURP operation may potentially promote the spread of tumor cells or tumor-promoting growth factors via the vascular passage (18). Additionally, the necessity of pTURP might imply a much severe condition of PCa, associated with hazardous complications such as a larger size of the tumor and a more aggressive or quick-spreading tumor (14). Poorly differentiated or aggressive prostate tumors are more likely to lead to invasive microvessel density and irregular vessel lumen (18–20).

Our results found that pTURP could significantly reduce the OS and CSS outcomes in both the overall and matched cohort. The mean survival time of the pTURP group was 36.49 vs. 45.52 months in OS and 50.1 vs. 61.28 months in CSS, compared with the non-surgical group in the matched cohort. This finding was consistent with several former retrospective studies. Choi et al. (14) reviewed 614 patients who received ADT, and pTURP showed notably lower survival rates among castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC)-free survival, OS, and CSS than the ADT only group. They specially regarded pTURP as an independent hazard factor of CSS with an HR and 95% CI of 2.543 (1.008–6.420). Pelletier et al. (21) found that the 5-year OS of patients after pTURP was only 16% (95% CI: 6.5–29.8). It was similar to the 18.7% of our 5-year OS results. Jin et al. (22) reported pTURP as an independent risk factor for the biochemical recurrence for prostate cancer, leading to significantly lower survival rates. Krupski et al. (16) also concluded that pTURP was an adverse prognostic factor even after the adjustment of the classical tumor characteristics. Note that studies also demonstrated that generally, the pTURP group had a larger prostate volume than the non-pTURP group before matching, which may contribute to the unfavorable prognosis in pTURP. Interestingly, the resection weight, resection time, and blood transfusion were tested not correlated with CSS (14, 22).

There were also some opposite opinions. Qin et al. (23) analyzed the curative effect of complete androgen blockade (CAB) therapy only and pTURP+CAB combined therapy for patients with metastatic hormone sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC). Their study revealed that pTURP was beneficial to both the OS (24.4 vs. 22.9 months) and CSS (24.4 vs. 24.1 months), resulting in a more prolonged and sensitive response to hormone therapy in mHSPC. Qu et al. (24) included 118 patients with mPCa; 110 of them were in the pTURP+ADT group. They reported that the 3-year CSS of pTURP + ADT group was higher than that in the ADT alone group (95.9 vs. 64.9%, p = 0.004). In their analysis, it was found that pTURP + ADT could improve the CSS outcomes when PSA ≥65 ng/mL, Gleason Score (GS) ≥8, and bone metastasis ≤ 5. As expected, pTURP could obviously improve LUTS symptoms in these patients. Crain et al. (12) reported that pTURP could be performed safely with significant improvement in the urinary symptoms and quality of life in mPCa patients. Moreover, Sehgal et al. (20) revealed that pTURP is a necessity for patients with PCa and high Gleason sum and the presence of retention, which showed an ideal 6-month catheter free rate of 72%. Therefore, the application of pTURP in patients with mPCa and serious BOO should be comprehensively considered.

Even though our study analyzed a large sample of patients with long-time follow-ups, certain limitations still existed in our study. The limitations were as follows: (1) for patients with mPCa, medical treatments like ADT were essential factors for the control of disease progression. However, limited by the original data from the SEER database, this information was unavailable and cannot be obtained. We were unable to identify the patients with the same initial treatment, for example, patients who received enzulatamide + pTURP vs. enzulatamide alone. It is the biggest limitation of our study. (2) Limited by the raw data in the database, the information of BOO and the intraoperative information such as prostate volume, operative time, blood loss, and postoperative complications were unavailable. This information might have a relation with OS. It might cause interferences for the results. (3) Only the survival outcomes were analyzed in our study. Many important outcomes such as biochemical recurrence-free survival, urinary symptoms, and quality of life, were not analyzed because of the raw data in the database. (4) For pTURP, some new minimally invasive methods, such as laser vaporization therapy featuring high-energy vaporization of prostate tissue, may have a better effect in confining tumor spread. Further analysis is needed to eliminate the deficiency of these methods on mPCa patients.

For patients with mPCa and BOO, pTURP could reduce OS and CSS to a certain degree while relieving the obstruction. However, with the limitation of our study, more high-quality studies are needed for further evaluation.

The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found in the article/supplementary material.

KF, PS, and QD designed the protocol, extracted and analyzed the data, drafted the manuscript, revised the manuscript, approved the final manuscript, and supervised all stages of this study. JZ, LY, PL, and NL extracted and analyzed the relevant data, drafted the manuscript, revised the manuscript, and approved the final manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This work was supported by a Key Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China; Grant ID: 8177060452; and 1.3.5 project for disciplines of excellence, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Grant ID: ZY2016104.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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