Detection of circulating prostatic cells during radical prostatectomy.

The detection of micrometastasis of prostate cancer could help to decide more appropriate therapeutic strategies in an individual patient. We have developed a flow cytometric method for detecting cytokeratin-positive cells in the peripheral blood before, during and after radical prostatectomy in patients with prostatic carcinoma. By means of this technique we were able to detect a higher number of cytokeratin-positive cells in the intraoperative blood sample than in the pre- and postoperative blood sample in 15 patients with prostate cancer (P < 0.