Survival benefit of radical prostatectomy in lymph node-positive patients with prostate cancer.

Background: Positive lymph node (LN) status is considered a systemic disease state. In prostate cancer, LN-positive diagnosis during pelvic LN dissection (PLND) potentially leads to the abandonment of radical prostatectomy (RP).

Objective: To compare the overall survival (OS) and relative survival (RS; as an estimate for cancer-specific survival) in LN-positive patients with or without RP.