Prostate Cancer: What About Reproducibility of Decision Made at Multidisciplinary Team Management?

Purpose: The prostate cancer (PCa) treatment is multimodal. Thus multidisciplinary team management (MDTM) decision-making process appears as a tool to answer all aspects of PCa treatment. Our aim was to evaluate the repro­ducibility of therapeutic decisions made at MDTM. Materials and Methods: We compared therapeutic decisions of PCa by presenting the same file of patient un­der a fake identity after 6 to 12 months from the first presentation. Forty-nine files of radical prostatectomy (RP) (28 pT2, 21 pT3) performed for clinical localized PCa were represented at MDTM which included urologist, on­cologist, pathologist and radiologist. Analysis of therapeutic decisions comprised criteria such as: TNM stage, Gleason score, margin status and comorbidities. The reproducibility was assessed statistically by Kappa coefficient. Results: Study subjects included 49 patients who underwent radical prostatectomy (RP). The mean age was similar in pT2 and pT3 groups ( P = .09). The mean serum PSA value was 8.32 ng/mL (range, 3.56-19.5) in pT2 group and 9.4 ng/mL (range, 3.8-22) in pT3 group. The margin status in pT2 and pT3 groups was positive in 25.0% and 47.6%, respectively. The decisions made at first and second MDTM for pT2 group were the same in 100% of cases with a per­fect kappa coefficient (k = 1). In the group of pT3 (n = 21), the decisions were different in 33% at the second MDTM in comparison to the first MDTM. Especially for pT3b only 29% were reproducible decision with a slight agree­ment (k = 0.1). Concerning pT3a, 86% of the decisions were reproducible with a substantial agreement (k = 0.74). Conclusion: We showed a reliability and reproducibility of decision made at MDTM when guidelines are well de­fined. The therapeutic attitudes were less reproducible in locally advanced PCa but decision concerning those cases should be made in the setting of guidelines.