The Establishment of New Thresholds for PLND-Validated Clinical Nomograms to Predict Non-Regional Lymph Node Metastases: Using 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT as References

Abstract

By using ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA PET/CT as reference of LNM, the PLND-validated clinical nomograms can not only predict regional LNMs, but also predict non-regional LNMs. The additional information from ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA PET/CT may provide added benefit to nomograms-based clinical decision-making in more than two-thirds of patients for reducing unnecessary PLND. We focused on that a threshold can be set for current clinical PLND-validated nomograms to predict extrareolar LN metastases with an AUC accuracy of about 80% after optimizing the simple nomograms which may help to improve the efficiency for PC therapy significantly in clinical practice.