Positive surgical margins: rate, contributing factors and impact on further treatment: findings from the Prostate Cancer Registry.

Objective: To describe the characteristics of patients with and without positive surgical margins (PSMs) and to analyse the impact of PSMs on secondary cancer treatment after radical prostatectomy (RP), with short-term follow-up.

Patients And Methods: We analysed data from 2385 consecutive patients treated using RP, who were notified to the Prostate Cancer Registry by 37 hospitals in Victoria, Australia between August 2008 and February 2012. Independent and multivariate models were constructed to predict the likelihood of PSMs.